Harry Potter in the City of Angels
by BrilliantLady
Summary: Maze knew there was something different about the bone-thin child in rags she'd seen rummaging through a trash can for food. She was going to find him and figure this out. He shouldn't be any harder to track down than a rogue demon after all, his appearance was quite distinctive. Scruffy black hair, round glasses, and a lightning-bolt scar on his forehead. Rescue!fic, complete.
1. Food

A/N: A gift fic for mackiechandler. Thank you for the prompt. :)

**Unfamiliar with the "Lucifer" TV fandom?** To give you a quick spoiler-friendly summary, Lucifer decided to take a holiday from ruling Hell and moved to Los Angeles with his favorite demon, Mazikeen (aka Maze), who used to torture damned souls for him. He nows runs a nightclub in LA and also volunteers solving homicides part-time with an attractive blonde detective, Chloe Decker. Chloe is a divorced mom with a young daughter, Trixie. This story is set in season 2, and Chloe is living in denial about who Lucifer is, despite his regular public claims of being the Devil. She isn't convinced that Lucifer is anything but an odd but charming man with hypnotic powers and a few other abilities she tries hard not to think about too much. Lucifer and Maze have scary demonic appearances that they usually hide, looking most of the time like regular humans.

* * *

Harry watched the rubbish bin on the street corner expectantly. It was perfectly positioned near a string of high-end cafés that made takeaway sandwiches, sushi, bagels, and coffee, and people sometimes threw out half-eaten sandwiches or sushi there during the busy lunchtime rush. Some people were just too busy on their phones or in too much of a rush to get back to their high-rise offices to finish their meals, and too affluent to bother saving a quarter of a sandwich for later.

He hated – oh how he hated – Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia for abandoning him in America without a passport. They'd dumped him and gone back to England without even a second thought about how he was supposed to survive. He hated sleeping in doorways, and in dirty alleys behind skip bins. Digging through rubbish bins for food, though? He actually didn't mind that. He was eating better than he ever had in his whole life. He hated having to dig through cigarette butts or spilled coffee to get at the good food, though, which was why he was staking out one of his favorite bins.

As he watched expectantly, a woman wearing tight black leather clothes with tawny skin and long black hair passed by the bin, throwing away a perfectly good bread roll with only a single bite taken out of it.

"I can't believe they left out the pickles!" she muttered to herself as she walked towards where Harry was lurking almost out of sight in the narrow service alley between two towering buildings with cafés on their ground floors. "Bitch deserves bamboo under her fingernails for leaving out my damn pickles!"

She wandered off carelessly, fishing a slim phone out of her tight black leather pants, and Harry seized the moment of general inattention from passing pedestrians, darting past her to the bin. He hungrily dug out the bread roll, still mostly wrapped in thin white paper, and took a bite.

_Bliss_. Pastrami, swiss cheese, and some kind of fancy lettuce mix, on a seed-crusted bun. He moaned with delight as he chewed, starting to wander off down the street with his prize.

"Hey, spawn!" a woman growled, grabbing at his arm. He clutched the sandwich tightly so he wouldn't drop it, his hand crushing the paper. "What are you doing, getting food from the trash?"

Harry was forcibly spun around, and saw it was the woman who'd just thrown away her lunch. "You didn't want it!" he said defensively. "I'm hungry, okay?"

"You should be at home – it's a Saturday. Get some food there!"

"I'm homeless, not that it's any of your business. You threw it out, why do you care?"

"Decker said kids shouldn't eat food that falls on the floor, or that's gone in the trash. C'mon boy, chuck it in the trash can!"

She started trying to wrestle the sandwich out of his hand, and Harry pulled back against her angrily. "Don't call me 'boy'! It's mine now, let go!"

The roll fell apart, scattering its delicious contents to the dirty footpath.

Harry sniffled unhappily. "Now look what you've done!" he wailed.

He spun away and turned to run, but she yanked him back easily, quick as a striking snake, and held him pinned with fiercely strong hands on both shoulders, making him face her whether he wanted to or not.

"I think I'd better take you to the cops," she said thoughtfully, staring at him. "Decker could help you get home. Young spawn like you should be with their families. I think. Or possibly working as chimney sweeps."

"No!" he yelled. "I hate them! I'm not going back!"

He twisted and flailed in her grip, hitting at her arms and kicking at her legs, but she may as well have been made of marble for all the good it did him. He even bit at her arm, but it did absolutely nothing. The cloth _looked_ thin, but obviously was tougher than it appeared.

She laughed mercilessly at his futile struggles, and a passer-by in a suit stopped to ask uncertainly. "What are you doing with that kid?"

"Taking him to the cops. Little trash-thief street rat!" She said it cheerfully rather than threateningly, as if she found it all deeply amusing, but it provoked a new frenzy of struggles from Harry.

He would _not_ go to the police! Uncle Vernon had warned him what would happen to him if he ended up in prison, and if even _half_ of it was true he wanted no part of it!

No! _No! _Twisting his head around he sank his teeth into the back of her right hand, with every iota of his being focused on a single goal – he _must_ get free! He tasted the salty tang of blood as his teeth broke her skin, and she let go of him in utter shock. Harry wasted no time ducking under the busybody businessman's grasping arms and running for it at top speed.

_Free_!

He ran six blocks before he felt safe to stop, including ducking through a mall and hiding behind parked cars to make sure no-one was following him. Eventually he calmed down enough to stay put long enough to get his breath back, hunched over and gasping as he sucked much-needed oxygen into his lungs.

He stretched out his legs and gave himself a shake. Forget the high-end stuff with vitamins. He'd wander through a food court again and pick up the leftover boxes of noodles and bits of burgers and chips abandoned on tables. He was going to get some lunch one way or another.

When Harry settled down for the night in 'his' alleyway in front of a long-blocked doorway with a slight overhang that sheltered him from rain, he was as happy as he thought he'd ever been. His belly was full of burger bits, honey soy chicken noodles, and half a Caesar salad. A nice homeless woman had given him an old green jumper she said was too small for her now in exchange for a half-drunk abandoned bottle of wine he'd nicked when passing by some kind of poncy street bar, and he'd found a new sturdy plastic bag to store his meager belongings in. Life was good.

He woke up in the middle of the night to a foot firmly poking him in the ribs.

"Hey, street rat. Wake up."

Harry rolled over into a ball, protecting his vulnerable face and belly while his hand darted underneath the old t-shirt stuffed with scrunched up newspaper that served as his makeshift pillow.

He came up with a snarl, brandishing a large shard of sharp glass with a strip of fabric wrapped around the base as a handle. "I'm not going _anywhere_ with you, and if you try to grab me I will _cut_ you!"

He bared his teeth and growled at his attacker, who turned out to be the sandwich-woman from earlier that day. How had she found him? _Why_ had she found him? Not a social worker – not in skintight black leather and heels. Probably a prostitute. Well he certainly wanted no part of that! His crazy-vicious-animal act would hopefully dissuade her, like it had others. He was no easy prey.

"Easy, spawn, I won't hurt you. Well, not unless you give me a reason to. I just want to know what you are, and why you're here."

"Don't touch me!" he said, flinching back and waving his makeshift weapon threateningly.

"Why the hell would I want to touch you, you filthy little demon spawn? Now, tell me exactly what and who you are, and why you're here, and why you didn't report in to Lucifer. Or else." The woman whipped a pair of curved daggers out from behind her back and pointed them at him threateningly. "I won't ask a third time. Start talking or I start cutting the answers out of your skin."

_Damn, I'm in trouble_, Harry thought despairingly.

"I'm Harry. Harry Potter," he said weakly, eyeing her blades. He wouldn't go down without a fight, if it came to that. "I don't report to anyone – I don't have a pimp, or a boss. I don't know those names, unless you count that Lucifer is like the devil in the bible. I don't work for anyone. I'm just… I'm just trying to survive, okay?"

"And you are _what_ exactly? A demon?"

"What? No! I'm just a kid."

"Any relation to Chloe Decker?"

"Who?" Harry asked, bewildered, then yelped and cowered back as the woman's knife suddenly flashed to hover a half-inch in front of his nose.

"Answer me!"

"No! I've never heard of her! My dad's name was James Potter and my mum was Lily Evans! The only relatives I know are the Dursleys!"

"Human names," the woman said, sounding disgusted. "What's your real name? You're not human, you can't be."

"I am, I'm just a normal kid," Harry said, but his body was frozen as he said it, eyes darting back and forth like a trapped animal looking for an escape.

The woman's eyes lit up with glee and her tongue darted out to lick at her lips excitedly. "No you're not. I can see it. I _felt_ it," she said, holding up her right hand to show off the tooth marks that could be seen even in the dim streetlight. "Lies won't work with me. What. Are. You?"

"A freak! I'm a freak!" Harry said, and started to sob. She could tell. How could she tell? "Please, don't send me back. I don't want to go. I'd rather live on the streets."

"Now we're getting somewhere," the woman purred. "And where in Hell did you come from, and how did you get out?"

"England. And I didn't get out, I got dumped here and they left. We came by plane!" he added in a rush, starting to babble as he saw her impatient, frustrated look. Hopefully something he said would give her the answer she wanted. "Uncle Ver... my uncle came here for a conference, and we stayed at the Holiday Inn, and when I ate the food in the hotel fridge my uncle said he didn't want to look after a damn thief and waste of space for the rest of his life, and he took my passport and they just left without me!"

"_Before_ England," the woman said, glaring at him.

"Nowhere? I was a baby?"

"No, you weren't. How did you get out of Hell? Who came with you?"

"I wasn't in Hell, I was in England?" Was this woman _completely nuts_?

She nicked him with the knife, a small cut on the back of his right hand to match her own injury, and he shrieked and lashed out ineffectually with his glass dagger, which she knocked easily out of his hand. It shattered on the hard concrete.

"No lies!"

"I'm not lying, that's all I know! I don't know where my parents lived before someone took me to Surrey! England! Surrey in England! I swear!"

The crazy woman licked his blood off her knife with a languorous swipe of her tongue, smacking her lips together as if savoring the bouquet. "You know what, little spawn? I believe you. So, your home is in England? As far as you know? Living with humans?"

"Yes… no," Harry said. "Yes to the human part. But I don't _have_ a home! They threw me out! Uncle… He said he didn't want me, no-one wanted me, and my aunt just stood there and watched! She didn't care about me either! And then they got in the taxi and left! Well I don't care, I don't even _want_ to go back!" Harry screamed, angry tears making his grubby face all blotchy.

The woman seemingly ignored his tears and rage, just nodding thoughtfully. "And you say you're a freak? Why? Do you have another face?"

"What? No. It's just… sometimes things happen. Things that… don't make sense. My aunt and uncle-"

"The humans who raised you?"

"Yes. They always say – said – that I'm a freak. Strange things happen, sometimes."

"Like what?" she asked.

"Once I was running away from… bullies. I ended up on a roof. I don't know how. I guess I jumped, and the wind carried me up," he muttered, shamefacedly. "But… it was pretty high. They had to get a ladder to get me down. I got locked up for-"

His lips clamped shut. There was no reason to go into more details than she needed. She didn't need to know how long they'd locked him up in his cupboard under the stairs.

"You flew? Do you have wings?"

"No."

"Do either of your parents have wings? Or have horribly scarred faces? Horns? Weird-colored skin?"

He stared at her. She stared back, face dead serious. "No. That is… I don't think so. But I've never seen any pictures of them. They died in a car crash when I was a baby, and I've lived with my aunt and uncle my whole life."

She hummed thoughtfully, like his answer made sense to her, and Harry relaxed some more. His tears were coming to a halt in the face of her continued calm and odd questions. "Know anything else about them?"

"My aunt said they drank a lot, and that my father didn't work. That he was a 'layabout'. Oh, and I look a lot like my dad, except for my eyes. I got this scar in the car crash," Harry said, sweeping his fringe aside so she could see the lightning bolt line on his forehead.

"Not much of a scar. Demons like to drink a lot. Even Amenadiel likes wine – alcohol doesn't affect our kind like it does humans. Do you get drunk?"

Harry tilted his head. "I'm ten. I'm not allowed to drink alcohol."

"Oh yeah, humans and their weird rules."

"You think I'm not human?" he asked tentatively.

She shrugged. "You shouldn't have been able to hurt me with your pathetic little teeth if you were plain human. No, if you're not a demon or an angel, you're probably a half-breed. Anything else weird ever happen around you, or to you? Talk."

Harry's mind whirled. Were demons really real? And angels? "I turned a teacher's hair blue once. Well, maybe it was me. She was being mean and I was so mad at her then – bam! Blue hair. Not like with dye. Umm… what else… my hair grows back really fast when it's cut, like overnight."

"Fast healing?"

"I guess. It depends how hungry I am. I heal faster when I get to eat."

"And those humans of yours didn't feed you much, did they?"

"No."

She nodded. "Anything else? People treating you funny? Screaming when you look at them when you're angry? Or worshipping you?"

Harry tried hard to remember anything odd. "Sometimes people bow to me? It's happened a couple of times. There was this man in a top hat and a green cloak? I don't think anyone's ever been scared of me. People seem to hate me a lot, though. That's kind of… typical. Everyone back hom… back in England thinks I'm a delinquent. They say I'm no good, even though I never do anything bad. Like they just assume I'm evil."

The woman spun her knives around then sheathed them at her back. "I'm Mazikeen. Does the name ring a bell?"

"No. It's… nice to meet you?" he said. No need to offend the weird woman with knives.

"I'm a demon."

"Uh huh," he said, but his soothing agreeing tones seemed to rile her up.

"You don't believe me? Want to see my real face?"

Harry shrugged. "Sure. Do whatever you want to prove it, that doesn't involve hurting me." He half-believed already, though. It didn't make sense, he couldn't be _sure_ it was true. But… maybe. Weird things _did_ happen around him. Things that shouldn't be possible.

"Okay, but don't panic, spawn. Run and I'll just catch you again – you know I can. There's a lot of people on the streets who owe my boss a favor, and I've got plenty of cash to bribe the ones who don't. You don't fight me or lie to me, and I won't hurt you. Deal?"

"Deal."

He braced himself for something horrible and his fearful expectations weren't disappointed as half her face seemed to melt away to reveal a mass of twisted, blackened scarred flesh and a sightless milky-white eye.

He let out a strangled scream, choking it down as she stared at him. "Sorry. That was… startling. Yes, okay, you're a demon. Or are you half a demon? The other half looks fine."

"Full demon, forged in Hell."

"Okay, okay…" Harry said, taking deep breaths. "And what am I?"

"Almost certainly a half-breed. Nephilim seems unlikely, given that God made angels sterile after the Flood, after that whole mess of breeding with mortal women. Not impossible, but damn unlikely. My money's on you being a cambion – a half-demon. Do you know which of your parents was mortal, if any?"

"Well, I lived with my mum's sister and her husband and my cousin. They are normal. Human, anyway. So, I guess my mum was more likely to be human?" Harry volunteered. He shuffled around on the ground, leaning back against the closed door in his sleeping nook. He felt kind of faint. This night was just so confusing and he didn't know what to feel about anything, his emotions were all in a whirl.

"What are you going to do to me? I don't want to go to prison."

"I'm not going to take you to prison. Or the cops. I think I'd better take you to my boss, actually. There's no-one I've met in a long time who needs a favor as badly as you do, little cambion."

"Harry."

She grinned at him, the cheerful expression somewhat ruined by the garish sight of teeth and gums exposed too far on one side by the charred, sinewy flesh of her face. "You can call me Maze, Harry. Don't worry, I'm going to find you a home. No demon – half-breed or otherwise – should have to scrounge on the street for scraps. Come on, we're going to Lux. Lucifer's curious to meet you too."

Harry gulped nervously. "Is he… evil?"

"Nah, being on earth has made him soft. And as he'll tell just about anyone – at length – he only punishes the wicked."

Maze reached out and pulled Harry to his feet, then grabbed his belongings, all two bags of them. "Let's go." She shifted her face back to its former pristine state before they emerged from the alley.

Harry trailed after her, not sure he really had a choice otherwise. As they walked, and walked, he peppered her with anxious questions.

"Does it count as wicked if you take food from bins?"

"Rummaging through trash is gross, but not wicked, little street rat."

"Why are you calling me that?"

"Because Trixie made me watch Aladdin twice last week."

"Who's Trixie?"

"A human kid. She's a friend of mine. I'm moving in with her and her mum, soon."

"You say you'll find me a home. Does that mean in Hell?"

"No. Unless you want to go there? I know an angel who could maybe take you. I don't think you'd survive, though, unless you know how to fight?"

"Only a bit. Mostly I run. I don't want to go to Hell."

"Fine by me. Do you want to learn how to fight?"

He mulled her return question over for a while. "Yes. Yes, I would, actually." He'd had a few very unpleasant encounters, living rough on the streets. "With a knife. Something easy to hide. Not a gun." No-one in their right mind would sell a ten-year-old a gun or bullets, but a knife should be easy to acquire.

"Good choice," she said, with an approving grin. "Do you like the idea of hurting people? Be honest."

Harry sighed. "Sometimes I daydream about hurting my family. They… they hurt me. Dudley would beat me up. They locked me in a cupboard and didn't feed me, when they were angry at me. Aunt Petunia liked to hit me with the frying pan if I wasn't quick enough in the kitchen. I hated having to work, and work, and work, and no matter what I did, nothing was ever good enough. Nothing ever made them happy. Do you know what that feels like? To work your fingers to the bone and not be appreciated? And they just left me here! Stranded in a strange place! So yeah, I'm mad at them. Wouldn't you be?"

"Yeah… yeah, I would be," Maze said, gazing at him thoughtfully as they walked. "I know what it's like to try and try and not be recognized for everything I do. To be paid attention to only when I'm useful and cast aside or punished whenever dealing with me is inconvenient. And I'm stuck here too. It wasn't _my_ plan."

Despite the woman – demon – being rather terrifying, Harry couldn't help but respond to the heartbreak in her voice. He reached out and gave her hand – entangled in his shopping bags of old clothes and bits and pieces – a brief sympathetic squeeze. She blinked at him wonderingly, and he let her hand go right away.

After a while, Harry added, in a soft voice. "Do you think that makes me evil? Wicked? To be so mad at them I want them to suffer?"

"No," she said. "Wanting vengeance for wrongdoing is perfectly fine, no need to feel guilty about it. You can't kill humans over stuff, but it's alright to hurt them if you get a chance. Sometimes though, the best thing to do is just say, 'Screw them!' and head off to live your own life. A happier life, on your own away from them."

"I've been happier in LA," Harry said.

"Yeah, me too, I guess…" Maze said, looking lost in thought again.


	2. Shelter

Eventually they reached Lux, Lucifer's nightclub, and Maze blithely skipped herself and Harry past the waiting queue of beautiful young people dressed to the nines and took him straight up to the penthouse. As they passed through the crowd of patrons in the club, she gave a wave to the handsome man playing the grand piano and pointed her bag-filled right hand at the elevator. The man gave her a nod and continued playing and singing 'Starman' by David Bowie.

"What was that about?" Harry asked, in the lift.

"That's the boss. Lucifer Morningstar. He'll meet us upstairs."

"He looked pretty human."

"So do I. My real form usually sends humans screaming. You're an exception. He hides his devil face too, just like I do."

"Fair enough."

Maze rummaged in a small bar fridge and emerged moments later with a bowl of ice cream topped with strawberries and chocolate syrup she handed to Harry, and a glass of orange juice.

"You like ice-cream, right? Eat up!" she ordered.

He sat down on the couch and started digging in immediately, not one to turn down _any_ offer of food, even if he wasn't especially hungry at eleven at night.

"Thanks!"

"You're welcome," she said, with a sudden smile.

A few minutes later, Lucifer wandered into the penthouse with a tumbler full of whiskey, and leaned on the bar next to Maze.

"Alright Maze," he said, "what's going on, and why do you have a ragamuffin in tow this evening?"

"I found him!" she said proudly. "I want to keep him."

Harry's heart leapt into his throat. She wanted to keep him? He was equal parts exhilarated and terrified. The night had been so full of emotional whiplash, it was exhausting.

"Keep him? You can't keep a child – his parents will miss him. It's what humans do. Remember all the fuss whenever Trixie visits?"

"This is different. His parents won't miss him, they're dead."

The man raised a weary hand to his brow. "Maze," he said, rebukingly, "tell me you _didn't_."

"No! I remember the rules. His parents died when he was a baby. I found him on the streets."

"He still belongs to _someone_. The Detective will be furious when she finds out. Didn't I hear you were going to move in with her? She'll figure it out, Maze. She's clever enough for that. Hell, even Detective Douche is clever enough to be suspicious about you suddenly acquiring a child."

Harry put his spoon down and piped up to interject his two cents. "Um, excuse me? But I don't really belong to anyone. Maze is right, my parents died when I was a baby. I was being raised by my aunt and uncle, but they left me here and went back to England. So I've been living on the streets. Maze said maybe you could do me a favor and find me a nice home?"

"I suppose a deal could be struck, for a future favor," Lucifer said, taking a sip of his whiskey.

"No deal! I'm calling dibs," Maze said. "I like him. I want my own spawn. He can play with Trixie – she told me she wants a sibling. This will be almost as good."

"You don't know the first thing about taking care of human spawn!" Lucifer argued.

"I do too! I'm friends with a child, and Decker's taught me all about childcare! I know they need food three times a day that's not just chocolate cake, no alcohol, lots of juice, clothes that are different for daytime and nighttime, school five days a week, toilet trips at least twice a day, they can't use sharp knives unless they're kidnapped, and they need to sleep in a bed for ten hours a night!"

Harry watched with surprise at the woman's proud recitation of parenting skills. It all seemed to him that it was all pretty basic information – albeit somewhat out of the grasp of the Dursleys in some respects – but it was a list that obviously impressed the nightclub owner, who looked very taken aback.

"Really? Ten hours a night?" he checked. "Not five?"

"Yup! Sometimes more! Ask the spawn if you don't believe me!" she said, waving at Harry. "Go on, tell him."

"Uhh… it's all true, except that you can use knives if you're cooking."

Maze shook her head emphatically. "Nuh-uh! Decker says Trixie's only allowed to make cereal and toast. And get herself fruit. No sharp knives; not even to train with. Spoilsport."

Harry hunched his shoulders and shrunk into himself. "Sorry. Maybe… maybe Trixie is too young for knives. I'm ten."

"Trixie's eight, I think… does two years make a big difference?" Maze asked.

"I dunno."

"Maybe you're just wrong, Maze," teased the man.

"I'm not wrong, Lucifer!" shouted the woman, slamming her hand down on the bar and making Harry jump at the loud noise. "Or… are you saying _Chloe's_ wrong? Shall I tell your Detective you said she's raising Trixie wrong, next time I see her?"

The man – Lucifer – blanched. "No need for that. Perhaps this spawn's former guardians were wrong. Humans do get parenting wrong, sometimes. What do you say, spawn?"

"Well… my relatives weren't very good at looking after me, I guess," Harry mumbled. "I mean… my cousin got all the best food, and I hardly got anything. He was always the favorite and I… I just wasn't. Ever. I did all the housework, too, and looked after the garden. My aunt just got to lounge around and get all the credit for everything _I_ did."

Maze tilted her head and gave Lucifer a meaningful look.

"Yes, yes, alright," he said irritably. "His story's touching. I didn't expect _you_ to fall prey to sentiment though, Mazikeen."

"_And_ his guardians kicked him out," she added smugly. "His uncle threw him out while his aunt just stood there and watched, sneering at him when he cried. They took his passport – left him stranded far from home – and went back to paradise in England while he was left to starve on the streets."

"I wasn't starving. People waste a lot of food," Harry muttered defensively. He wished she hadn't added that bit about him crying. She'd asked him a lot of questions on the way over to Lux, and he'd shared more than he'd planned to, bit by bit.

"He's been eating from bins. Sleeping on hard stone on the streets," Maze added. "But it's better than being beat up like he was at home before they threw him out, right, Harry?"

"Yeah."

"The utter bastards!" Lucifer swore, gulping down the last of his whiskey and slamming the glass down hard on the bar. "That settles it, he's not going back. You don't want to go back, do you, Harry?"

"No, sir!"

"Are you sure you want to stay with Maze, though? You should really live with other… people. Those more used to children."

Harry could almost hear him biting back the word 'humans'.

"Hey, I'll do a great job! How hard can it be?"

"I think she'll do better than my aunt and uncle. A bed, clothes, and food three times a day sounds good to me. It's a great start," Harry vowed, not wanting to lose this chance for a better life. "She can pick the rest up as she goes along."

"Aww, thanks, Harry!" Maze said, giving Harry a very careful hug that Lucifer made an odd face at.

"Ew. He's so grimy and sticky," the man said, wincing. "Are you sure?"

"Yes. He's not so bad. I'm used to being cried on, not to mention people leaking all kinds of other unpleasant bodily fluids, back in Hell. Besides, he's special. He saw I'm a demon and isn't scared of me now I'm not waving a knife at him. Also, he's not human, so he shouldn't stay with humans. What if he gets a demon face later on? They'd freak out."

"What?!" Lucifer said, jaw dropping. "You told him? He's seen your face? He's not human either?"

Maze explained in detail her theory about Harry most likely being a half-demon. Similarly to Maze, one of Lucifer's first questions was whether Harry was related to Chloe Decker or not, followed by an inspection of Harry's bare back.

"No wings," he said, prodding firmly between Harry's shoulder blades, as well as generally poking at the skin. His hands felt unusually warm, but not hurtfully so. "That should've made them pop out. It always worked on Azrael when she was a fledgling."

"He's got a scar," Maze pointed out. "On his forehead. That's more demon-like. It feels kind of… tainted?"

"One scar isn't a devil face," Lucifer rebutted. "Humans get scars all the time. He could be a witch?"

Maze snorted. "They all died out starting around the 1400s, with all those witch hunts. There used to be witches in every village, then they exterminated the lot over a couple of centuries, along with all the dragons and everything else magical. One in a hundred went to one in a thousand, then one in a hundred thousand, then they went extinct. No-one's seen hide nor hair of them since the late 1600s."

"You haven't seen any witches' souls recently in Hell?" Lucifer asked wistfully. "You were always more hands-on than I was."

Maze shook her head. "No. They were always rare, of course, and I don't deal with many of the new souls, but I haven't heard of any arriving. I don't remember witches having a supernaturally powerful bite, anyway. That's a demonic trait."

"True. He's probably a cambion, but we shouldn't rule anything out; he could be the descendant of some long-ago witch ancestor. His mix of powers don't make a lot of sense. Anything else you've left out, Harry?"

Harry thought about it. "There was this time when my aunt was trying to put a jumper on me, but the harder she tried the more it shrunk, until it couldn't fit a hand-puppet. That wasn't normal, no matter what my aunt said about how it must have shrunk in the wash." He held his hands out a narrow distance apart, to show how small it had gotten.

"And you're sure it was you, and not her, doing this… sartorial modification?"

Harry wasn't sure what 'sartorial' meant, but he thought he had the gist of what he was being asked.

"Well, she _wanted_ to put it on me, and I _really_ didn't want to wear it. It was an old jumper of my cousin's, and it was hideous! Poo-brown with orange bobbles."

Lucifer shuddered. "Sounds hideous. Why are you clad in rags if you have fashion sense strong enough to provoke the accidental use of supernatural powers?"

"Did you forget about the part where I'm homeless?" Harry snapped. "Besides, I never _got_ any new clothes. Only Du… my cousin's cast-offs, and he's as big as a whale."

"I like him, he's sassy," Maze said happily.

"I do love a rebel. Well, I think we'll have to get him some suits, perhaps a full wardrobe," Lucifer said thoughtfully, making Harry perk up interestedly. No-one had _ever_ offered to buy him clothes before, even when they'd criticized what he was wearing! "Now, tell me, why won't you say your relatives' names?"

Harry shrugged, looking away. "I don't want you to send me back to them."

"We won't," Maze promised.

"Someone might make you."

"Someone might make _Lucifer_ send you back?" she said, incredulously.

Harry hunched up again. "He might think I'm too much trouble. Or something weird might happen. I told a teacher once about how the… my aunt and uncle treated me. About how I slept in a cupboard under the stairs and went without meals. She seemed kind, and promised I'd never have to live with them again and would talk to the police for me, but three days later she was saying how they were very fine people and perfectly normal. She acted like she'd never even talked to me about it in the first place. She wouldn't even listen to me anymore and gave me detention when I tried."

Lucifer hissed. "Sounds like someone was _meddling_. Well, neither the forces of Heaven nor Hell will find Lucifer Morningstar easy prey for their machinations!"

"So I get to keep him?" Maze asked smugly.

"Of course. One last check for safety's sake though," Lucifer said, turning to Harry with eyes that drew him in like a whirlpool, like soft smothering darkness drawing him down. "Tell me, Harry, what is it that you desire? What do you want most of all in the world?"

"I want… I want to be safe. I want a home, with food, and nice clothes," Harry found himself saying. He didn't know why. Something was pushing him to be more open and honest than he'd planned.

"There's something more. Is that _all_ you want? What's your _deepest_ desire?" Lucifer asked, voice dark and low. "What do you really want from me and Maze?"

"I don't want to be a freak any more," Harry said, the words bursting out of him against his will. "I want someone to love me and look after me. I don't want to be treated like a burden. I want someone to love me for just who I am, even if I'm strange. Maze is weird, and you're the _Devil_, but you don't seem to hate me. You don't think the way I was treated was right. I want you to find me a home, and even Maze would be better than nothing, even though she cut my hand and didn't say sorry. She fed me ice-cream, and I've _never_ gotten to eat ice-cream before."

Lucifer leaned back and Harry blinked, suddenly feeling like he'd broken the surface of the water after a deep dive. Lucifer turned to Maze, and asked, "You cut his hand?"

She shrugged, unconcerned. "He bit me, and wasn't talking. Besides, I wanted to see if ordinary steel would hurt him. Also, what his blood tasted like – not pure demon, that's for sure. But there's _something_ odd there that's not pure human, I think. He's healing fine. It's not like I did it for no reason."

"Well, don't do it again."

"Why not? It wasn't life-threatening. It's barely a scratch."

Lucifer looked flummoxed by her question. "Because it's assault?" he said tentatively, after a long think.

"How do humans punish their offspring, then?"

Lucifer threw his hands up in the air. "I don't know! I think you take away cake. Or make them pay you money if they do something wrong. He's probably mostly human, so you should treat him like one. Go ask an expert. Ask the Detective. Or Linda."

"Fine, I'll do that then."

Turning back to Harry, Lucifer asked, "Are you _sure_ you want to live with her?"

"Sure enough? Especially if I turn out to be half-demon."

"A cambion," Maze corrected.

"I don't want people to hurt me because I'm different," Harry said, hugging his arms around his own chest. He felt really tired and emotionally wrung out. He just wanted to be safe, and for all of this to be over.

"Fine, fine, I'll sort out the paperwork," Lucifer said, with a sigh. "I think you'll get tired of him, though."

"I won't. And make sure it's _good_ paperwork," Maze warned.

"Of course! We don't want to alarm the Detective with any irregularities. But Maze, if it turns out he's completely human, you'll have to give him back. Put him into the foster care system with their other spawn."

"But if he's not, I get to keep him? Your word on that, Lucifer! I'll get to keep him even if he's a nephilim, or something else. That'll be one in the eye for those arrogant pigeons."

"You have my word, Mazikeen."

Harry's heart warmed to hear someone arguing to _keep_ him, instead of arguing about who they could foist him off on, like the Dursleys did. He'd lost count of the number of times they'd threatened him with an orphanage. Yet in the end they hadn't even bothered with the courtesy of dumping him at one.

He drifted off asleep on the couch while the adults argued about the details of how to sort out his living situation, identification, and clothing.

He woke briefly, startled to find Maze carrying him to bed. He flailed for a brief panicked moment in her grasp, before settling down.

"Hush, I'm just taking you to bed," she said, settling him into an enormous soft bed with red silk sheets that looked big enough for three people, let alone one small boy.

"Is this your bed?" he asked sleepily. "I don't want to take your bed. Or Lucifer's."

"It's a spare room," she told him. "Not mine or Lucifer's. Before you go to sleep, do you want to pick a new name? It'll speed things up. Lucifer says Harry will give anyone looking for you too much of a lead. He suggests Henry; Harry could be a nickname for that."

"I don't mind," Harry said sleepily, "but I'd like to keep James as my middle name. It's my dad's name."

"Good. And you can have my last name I picked for the humans' sake – Smith. It's nice and common. Now, you lie down and I tell you a happy story. I don't have any books to read you, so I'll just have to wing it tonight." She sat next to him on the bed and pulled the sheet up to cover him to his neck. She patted and stroked his hair awkwardly at first, but with increasing confidence as he didn't object. It was odd, but nice, Harry thought.

Harry drifted back to sleep to her dulcet tones recounting a disturbing tale of how she'd tracked down an escaped sociopath who'd escaped from his cell in Hell due to not feeling guilt for his murderous actions, aided by her favorite hellhound, Gwyllgi.

* * *

A/N: Feauxen – Thanks for your concrit, I've edited the section about witches going 'extinct' for increased clarity.


	3. Clothes

Harry awoke the next morning well after dawn, which was unusual for him, but perhaps not unexpected after such a disturbed night. The bed was so soft it felt like he was resting on a cloud, and he almost hated to get up. The need to go to the bathroom and the scent of cheesy omelets drifting on the air eventually lured him from the bedroom, however.

Lucifer was in a small kitchen area cooking at the stove, but Maze was nowhere to be seen.

"Did Maze change her mind?" Harry asked, in a small voice.

"Good morning, Henry!" Lucifer greeted him, with a dazzling white smile. "Maze says to drink your juice and eat an omelet, while she's out shopping. Don't worry young cambion-or-possibly-nephilim, she'll be back soon enough, with clothes and hopefully some identity papers of various sorts. I certainly gave her enough money for quality work. Which reminds me, if anyone asks, you're still ten, and your birthday is the twenty-first of June."

"Why then?"

Lucifer flipped the omelet with a dexterous flip of the frying pan. "Summer solstice. It's a good, supernaturally powerful date, and easy to remember. Maze thought it would be fun to have your birthday on the longest day of the year; two reasons to celebrate instead of one. We didn't know when your real birthday was except that it was roughly half a year away from now since you said you're ten and a half, and we would've changed it, anyway."

Harry nodded. That was a good a reason as any, he guessed. He came over to perch on a high stool next to the bar.

"Are you really the devil? Not just another demon?"

"Really truly."

"Can you prove it?"

Lucifer slid a perfectly cooked omelet oozing with cheese and chopped ham onto a plate and slid it over to Harry. He also got a pre-poured cup of juice out of the mini fridge. "Hmm. Interesting question! Not easily, since I had my wings cut off years ago. I could show you a trick or two."

He got a silver coin out of his pocket – just an ordinary American quarter – and held his palm out face up. The coin rose into the air to hover above his hand, and with tiny flicking motions of his thumb that didn't touch the levitating metal, it started spinning in place.

"Cool!" said Harry, with wide eyes. "How about your face? Do you have a demon face like Maze?"

"Devil face. But it tends to drive mortals insane, so I don't show it unless it's truly deserved. Eat your omelet."

Harry tucked into his breakfast with enthusiasm, now he'd been given permission to start. "I want to see. Maze's was scary, but not too bad."

"I don't want to melt your mind. Maze would be… unhappy with me."

"But if I'm not fully human I'll be okay?"

"Theoretically."

Harry ate furiously for a while and gulped down his juice.

"What a mess. Did no-one teach you table manners?"

"If I ate too slowly, my cousin stole my food," Harry said, through an unapologetic mouthful of eggs.

"I could show you my eyes? If that goes well, we can consider a full reveal," Lucifer suggested, as Harry chased the last fragments of omelet across his plate.

"Sounds good! Your eyes are less scary?"

"Generally. They should only be frightening, rather than insanity-inducing. They should be enough to make you a believer."

Harry put down his fork and turned to face Lucifer, bracing himself. "I'm ready."

"Here goes, then." Lucifer's brown eyes flashed to red. Not just a plain single color, but eyes like fierce flames. There was a merciless inferno inside them, and Harry somehow just _knew_ that it was a glimpse directly into Hell.

"Wow, it's real," he murmured softly. He was glad he'd put his hands in his lap – maybe Lucifer wouldn't see them shaking. "That's pretty scary."

He looked away, having seen enough. "Am I going to Hell? For being… whatever I am? Or for stealing food? It was only food people didn't want. And some of Dudley's books. But he wasn't ever going to read them, you know. I didn't take anything he actually cared about."

He glanced back at Lucifer, who was watching him with a soft expression, eyes thankfully back to a human-looking deep brown.

"Probably not. If you're a cambion you might not have a soul – this life might be all you get, however long it is. And if you have a soul, well, Maze will make sure you're looked after when you eventually die. You can have a job, instead of being shuffled into a cell. You might even go to Heaven, if you're lucky. Have you done anything truly terrible? Anything you _know_, deep in your heart, was horribly wrong? Not just something somebody _told_ you was wrong, but something you feel deeply guilty about? Something you know in your heart that deserves punishment?"

Harry thought for a moment, then shook his head. "Not really. The things I've done are pretty little, I think. They're things I couldn't help, or that I'd do again if I had to. So, I guess I don't feel _that_ guilty about them."

"Then even the Silver City – Heaven – might be an option for you. Few children end up in Hell. Associating with me won't make any difference to that possibility but is likely to ensure you a more pleasant stay in Hell, should that be your eventual destination."

"That's good," Harry said, nodding decisively. "Are there any strawberries?"

"What?"

"Sorry. Are there any more strawberries _please_, sir? If it's not too much trouble?"

"That's all your questions? You're the Devil, Hell is real, please pass the strawberries?" Lucifer asked, sounding shocked.

"Uh… will Maze be nice to me?" he asked, unsure of what else Lucifer wanted him to ask.

"She'll do her best," Lucifer said, retrieving a container of berries from the fridge and passing it to Harry. "But she will probably make mistakes. You might have to point them out to her. I've got a therapist I see – Dr. Linda Martin – who helps me out with these things. But Maze doesn't see her as often as I do. You'll actually be seeing her later, after we've got some preliminary paperwork sorted. Some kind of official psychologist's report might be handy to have available to placate anyone who asks about you."

"Can I eat the strawberries?" Harry checked.

"Why else would I give them to you? Go on, eat."

"Sometimes I got in trouble if I ate too soon. I don't want to get in trouble," Harry fretted.

"You won't get in trouble for eating. That's ridiculous. Maze and I barely need to eat, we just do it for fun. But if you get hungry then you eat. Simple. Oh, and something with vitamins. Not just cake. Maze insisted, and probably knows what she's talking about. That's why I made an omelet. You liked it, didn't you?"

"It was the _best_ food I've had in my whole _life_," Harry averred, which seemed to please Lucifer who hummed a happy song as he washed up the dishes.

"Of course it was. Go and have a shower now, cambion. You reek, and I won't have you contaminating my furniture further."

"I couldn't find my bags of clothes?" Harry fretted.

"Most have been thrown out as they were nothing but rags, and the remaining few items that weren't a horror have been sent downstairs for washing. There was a jumper that was passable, and a pair of shorts. Oh, and we kept your plastic toy army soldiers, the bible, your sad little bag of food, and the bottle of water. Though I must say, the bible is full of rubbish and I'd rather throw it out."

"It was all I had to read apart from old newspapers. Someone was handing them out for free, and I was bored," Harry said defensively.

Lucifer waved a hand at his wall full of bookshelves. "Well, I appreciate a love of reading, but I'm sure we can do better than _that_ bunch of biased tosh. History is written by the winners, Henry."

"Harry."

"I like Henry better."

Harry sighed and let it go. "I guess I can't stop you."

"No. Now go wash up. I'll lay a robe out for you on your bed. I'm sure I've got a few in petite sizes around here that you can wear until Maze returns with clothes. Perhaps some tiny clothes too. Short-shorts might work as regular shorts for you."

After his shower Harry emerged smelling like apples and got dressed in some red shorts that while loose were much better than Dudley's cast-offs, and could be tightened with a drawstring cord around the waist. There was also a pink t-shirt with cherries embroidered along the hem that he suspected was probably a woman's shirt, but which Harry found very comfortable and soft, and which fitted nicely. Wearing a girl's color was quite bearable, all things considered. He tried not to think too hard about the matching pink underwear. He'd worn Dudley's baggy old cast-offs, and that was _much_ worse, after all.

After posing for some unsmiling photos in front of a plain white stretch of wall, which Lucifer sent on his phone to Maze for 'Henry James Smith's' new passport, Harry was abandoned to spend the afternoon on his own.

Lucifer got a phone call not long after he'd taken the photos, and disappeared off with the instruction to stay in the penthouse and to order some pizza for lunch or dinner (he left a hundred dollar note for this purpose), and a very brief explanation that "the Detective needs me to help her catch a murderer."

Harry wished him luck and promised to stay put.

The sun was setting when Maze returned and found Harry curled up on the couch with a leather-bound copy of 'Oliver Twist' and a plate full of pizza crusts. Her phone was tucked between her chin and her shoulder as she juggled a dozen bags, dumping them onto the floor in front of Harry. She seemed to be in the middle of a phone call as she pointed wordlessly at Harry then waved vaguely at the bags.

Harry tentatively stood up and starting poking inside them, glancing up at her for approval which she gave with a curt nod. Clothes! Lots of clothes! Brand new, and everything!

"No, how would I know how to find a babysitter?" Maze said, then paused in her conversation while the other person presumably spoke.

"Well, Lucifer was here when I left. It's not _my_ fault he left, that's on you, Decker."

Harry dug into another giant bag. It was full of boxes of shoes. He tried one pair on, and they fit perfectly.

"How did you know my size?" he asked, wonderingly.

Maze covered the bottom half of the phone momentarily. "We measured you while you were sleeping."

Creepy. Useful, but creepy.

"No Decker, that wasn't to you, I was talking to Henry."

"Well, Patrick was downstairs opening up Lux, it's not like he was really alone! And we know now, okay, give me a break!"

"Probation? Damn, you and Lucifer are _both_ giving me a hard time about this! I told you, I _rescued_ him! Look, whatever. Just remember we need to find a bigger house now I've got a kid too. Yeah, of course I'll cover the difference. Uh huh. Sure."

Maze rolled her eyes and made a talking gesture with her hands, fingers flapping up and down. Harry giggled quietly, making her grin.

"'Not just for Christmas?' What the hell does that even mean? No, I'm not going to dump him. Wow, great trust there. Yeah, it's okay, no hard feelings. Well, I'll learn from you, won't I?"

There was a pause, and then Maze said, "Hang on."

She punched at the phone's screen, presumably muting it, and said, "She wants to talk to you. It's Decker, Lucifer's partner. She's a cop, so be careful what you say, and remember that your name is Henry James Smith, Harry for short, and you're a distant cousin of mine. I dunno, maybe I'm a second cousin once removed, or some shit. You were abused, your shit relatives dumped you here, and I tracked you down and found you on the streets. Your birthday is June twenty-first. Good luck, spawn!"

"Hello?" Harry said, after Maze handed over the unsilenced phone.

"Hi kid," came a soft and gentle woman's voice, that Harry could hardly believe must've been stridently telling off Maze a minute before. "I'm Detective Chloe Decker, I'm a friend of Lucifer and Maze's. How are you?"

"Happy and stuffed full of pizza. How are you?" he asked politely.

"Fine, just fine. I was just wondering if you were okay being left on your own today?"

"It wasn't a problem. I had books, and money for pizza. I'm ten, you know. Besides, it's a lot nicer here than being homeless. I was alone then _all_ the time. So this is a lot better. I had a shower! And the bed is super nice."

"Has everyone treated you nicely. No-one's… hurt you in any way?"

"You mean like abuse? No. Though Maze was a bit scary when I first met her."

Maze gave him a hurt look, putting her hands on her hips, but he ignored it.

"How did she scare you, Henry?"

"She woke me up in the middle of the night. I thought she was someone attacking me or stealing my stuff. But she brought me here to Lux and she's been super great since then. Did she tell you she's going to uh, give me a home and stuff?" He didn't mention Maze cutting him or licking at his blood on her knife. He wasn't _stupid_.

"Yeah, yeah she did," Chloe said, her voice still soft and encouraging. "But she doesn't have a lot of experience with kids. Is she really a relative of yours?"

"We think so, on my dad's side," Harry lied. "Maybe some kind of second cousin?" Maybe it wasn't a lie. It could be true.

"Don't you want to go back home? Don't you have family that misses you? Even if you fought, you can still make up. I can talk to your parents or guardians for you, smooth over any trouble."

"Would you miss people who locked you in a cupboard for three days with no food and only a bottle of water, just because you didn't mow the lawn properly?" Harry asked, bitingly cross. "Anyway, I did mow it properly, I just didn't do the straggly bits on the kerb. I didn't have the right tools."

"No, I guess I wouldn't," she said, her voice soft and sad. "Did they really do that?"

"_Yes._ I won't go back, and I'm not telling you who my aunt and uncle are. Were. It's not my home anymore, and you can't make me. My parents are dead and my uncle and aunt just left me here in Los Angeles and flew back home. My uncle said it was because I stole from the hotel fridge, but I was hungry, and anyway, I know it was just a stupid excuse. They don't want me, they never have. Maze does. She even argued with Lucifer about it until he agreed to help. No-one's ever wanted me before, so I want to stay with her."

"Okay, that's okay," Chloe soothed. "If you tell me their names, though, I can get the police to investigate them. If they've been abusive, they deserve to go to prison."

"No. I won't risk them finding me and having to go back," Harry snapped, and passed the phone back to Maze.

"Hey, it's me. No, I don't think he will. He doesn't want to tell Lucifer, either. Yeah, he could, but he didn't. Mmm. That's probably for the best," Maze said, pausing after each sentence for Chloe's reply. "I'd say Lucifer's pretty livid; it reminds him of being thrown out of his own home."

Harry breathed deeply and unpacked the rest of the bags, making big piles of stuff all over the couch. Clothes, shoes, socks and underpants, and two small Harry-sized black suits with white shirts that looked super expensive.

"I'll ask him. Hey Henry, did you suffer emotional, neglectful, physical, and/or sexual abuse?"

"Um. Neglect? Not sexual. Maybe the others. What counts? Do bad words count for emotional?"

"What?!" Maze yelled angrily into the phone, without replying to Harry. "You said to find out! Well, how else was I supposed to? Make up your mind, Decker. He says yes to neglect, no to sex, and maybe to the others. I think it's a yes on emotional though, unless it's _not_ supposed to hurt your feelings when someone calls you a freak and leaves you stranded in another country. No, he looks fine, no obvious injuries. He's looking through some stuff I bought him. He's a good kid, he's tough."

Harry smiled proudly at the praise, and the quicksilver-fast grin she flashed him. Compliments in his life had been few and far between.

"Hey Harry – yes it is, it's short for Henry derr – Decker wants to know if your relatives ever hit you. I remember you cousin bashed you, and your aunt hit you with the frying pan-"

"Yup. A couple of times."

"-What? Well you didn't ask me," Maze snapped at the phone. "Henry, how about your uncle?"

"With his belt, sometimes. Nothing worse than that. Mostly he just threw me into my cupboard when he was mad."

Maze relayed that snippet of honesty and gave a return message to Harry. "Decker says you're very brave and she's really proud of you for telling us."

"Really?"

"Yes, really."

Harry ducked his head and smiled and decided to move some of his new clothes to his temporary room. He decided he'd also put a few of the lighter and more useful clothes in one of his plastic bags, if he could find them. Just in case things went wrong and he had to leave.

When he came back, Maze was still on the phone.

"Check. I'll take him to talk to Linda. Yeah, I can buy a parenting book. Send me the name of a good one, Decker."

Maze nudged a small bag towards Harry, that he'd missed since it had gotten buried under the large empty bag that had formerly contained shoeboxes. Inside were a half-dozen children's books, including 'Goodnight Moon', a 'Spy School' series, 'Tales from the Crypt', 'Coraline', a book about the history of Stonewall, 'Welcome to America', and 'Tales of the Arabian Nights'.

He launched himself at Maze excitedly, hugging her tightly.

"Oof! No, I'm just being hugged. I've got to go. Yeah, talk to you soon."

"Thank you," Harry said earnestly, letting her go and shuffling his feet in embarrassment. "No-one's ever given me such nice things before. You're the _best_."

* * *

A/N: Hawkswench – Thanks for your book suggestion! It's been added to Harry's haul.

Guest – You wrote, "I thought that Lucifer said that no one had ever been able to escape Hell before because all humans feel subconsciously guilty?"

Yes, that's canon, however, it doesn't really work for me so I feel at liberty to tinker with it in a fic. For what it's worth, the escaped soul that Maze hunted down was unable to escape Hell, he merely escaped his cell and one particular Hell-loop. He was hounded (get it?) back into a new cell, where he got trapped in a fresh new Hell-loop.

*Maze pats Harry's hair* "…And there he suffered torment about animals he'd tortured when he was a child getting revenge on him by clawing and ripping into his flesh and biting out his throat, for ever and ever. Goodnight! Get some sleep now." *tucks covers snugly around Harry and sneaks out of the room like a stealthy ninja*


	4. Home

A/N: This chapter contains a major spoiler for the finale of season 1 of Lucifer, as well as some references to events in season 2.

* * *

The house Maze took Harry to – his new _home_ – didn't look at all like Privet Drive. Instead of being a cookie-cutter copy of the houses on either side of it with a manicured lawn, it was an interesting white stucco two-story house with a red tiled roof that looked different to the other homes on either side. There were palm trees out the front against the fence, but instead of a lawn and wisteria bushes there were only a couple of narrow garden beds filled with food plants like chilis. Around the edges of the concrete patio and all down one side of the house were a multitude of pot plants, including a row of rosebushes. The entryway was interesting – a row of windchimes hung from the eaves over the arches leading to the front door. They tinkled gently in the breeze as Maze led him inside.

"I'm Trixie!" chirped a small girl, rushing up to Harry the instant he went through the front door, and hugging him enthusiastically. "It's nice to meet you!"

Harry flailed wildly for a moment, before suppressing the urge to kick himself free. He patted the little girl gently on the head and looked around for help.

Maze was obviously not going to be of much assistance; she was laughing quietly at him. A blonde woman unpacking boxes on the granite benches of an open-plan kitchen – who logically must be 'Chloe Decker' aka 'The Detective' – brushed off her hands on her pants and came over to greet him too. She was giving him an amused smile, but at least she wasn't openly laughing.

"Trixie, let him go, monkey. Remember he had a bad family, just like Lucifer, and isn't used to hugs yet."

"I'll help you learn," Trixie promised earnestly, letting Harry go but holding out her hand. "We're nice people, you know. My mommy's a cop, and she _hates_ bad people who hurt kids. Do you want to see your room? Mommy and I picked it out – it's upstairs next to mine. You get the corner room with a little bathroom all your own in case you're shy being a boy in a house full of girls, and I get the one with the big cupboard because I have more stuff. Mommy has the big room near the stairs with a _ginormous_ walk-in closet, and Maze gets the downstairs room in case she has friends for sleepovers."

She chattered brightly as she tugged at his hand, pulling him upstairs. As they went towards the stairs, Harry saw there was a door set into the base of the closed-in stairs, and he froze, looking back at Maze. Trixie jerked to a stop and looked back at the adults too.

"I broke the lock on the door," Maze called out to him, matter-of-factly.

"You what?" Chloe said, looking crossly at her. "You remember we're renting and have to _pay_ for damages, right?"

"It's so Henry won't get stuck, in his mind. Like a Hell-loop. Worrying he might get locked up in the cupboard under the stairs. So, I took the entire door-handle off last night when I brought our stuff over. There's no way anyone could get stuck or locked in there."

"Oh," Chloe said softly. "That's… good parenting, Maze."

Maze straightened up proudly. "I am on _fire_ today! I fed him breakfast too – he was so surprised and happy when he woke up after sleeping in to hear that he didn't have to miss out or make himself something."

Harry pulled away from Trixie to peek at the door, finding it exactly as she said. It didn't look like a tidy job with a screwdriver, it looked more like the entire door handle had been ripped out forcibly with super-strength, with no regard for the splintered hole that had resulted in the wooden door or for the damaged doorframe. He pulled the door open carefully, finding only a bare narrow closet filled with empty shelves. There was room for a vacuum cleaner and a couple of mops, but certainly no room for a bed.

"Are you coming?" Trixie called impatiently. "Is it Henry or Harry?"

"Yes, I'm coming," Harry agreed, taking a deep shuddering breath. "Henry if I'm meeting strangers, please, but I generally prefer being called Harry."

"I'm Beatrice, but I like Trixie. Lucifer usually calls me offspring or spawn; he doesn't like my nickname. I think he's funny! I'll call you Harry, then, okay?"

"Maybe he just doesn't like nicknames. He prefers to call me Henry." He took Trixie's hand again and let her lead him upstairs.

"Do you like playing with dolls? I only have one favorite now that Tammy is in the bin. Her name is July. She's an All-American doll just like Landa's that Lucifer got me, and she came with her own mini kitchen and a tiny chocolate cake! You can play with her if you're careful. He and Mommy and Daddy agreed if I break any more dolls I have to wait for Christmas or my birthday to get a new one. Or you can share my Barbies. Do you like Barbies? I made a space-suit for one but it's not very good. Do you play Monopoly? I like Monopoly."

"Umm…" he said, rather overwhelmed by her enthusiastic welcome. "I've never played. With uh, any of that. I could try? I have some army men – little plastic ones. They're not much, but I like to play with them?"

He fussed nervously with his new rectangular-framed glasses. Maze had bought them for him two days ago, after Dr. Linda had suggested after his session with her that Maze take him to see a doctor and an optometrist. Dr. Linda was super nice, and believed him about _everything_, except for the bit about maybe being part-demon. She warned him not to get caught up in Lucifer's metaphors, and Harry quickly agreed with her that it was all just pretend (even though it obviously wasn't).

"And Maze bought me some _books_," he added, with the gentle reverence due his first real gift. "You can read them too if you're careful with them?"

His cautious offer was met with another blinding grin, and a little bounce of excitement. "Sure! We can share! Like we're brother and sister, okay? And I'll teach you Monopoly!"

"Okay?"

Trixie led him inside his new room, which looked fairly bare – but wonderfully large – and had beige walls and a soft brown carpet. A single bed sat next to the window, with red bedsheets and a flame-patterned fluffy blanket. A few paltry boxes of belongings – which Harry had helped pack late last night at Lux – sat on the floor, and an empty wooden bookshelf waited to be filled. There was a built-in wardrobe with sliding mirrored doors, and a door leading to a tiny bathroom with a toilet, vanity, and shower.

"Do you want me to help you unpack? I've been unpacking all morning. I've got all my posters up, too. Do you want to see my room?"

Harry compliantly went to admire the room across from his. There was a drawing with a penciled-notice on her door that read, 'No boys allowed except for Lucifer and Dad and Henry" He gave her a shy, pleased look as they entered, happy to see his name squished in down the bottom of her sign.

It reminded him a _little_ of Dudley's, as it looked very full of stuff, but it wasn't all the expensive electronics, toys, and knick-knacks that had crammed every inch of space in his cousin's room until he'd demanded a second room from his parents to contain the overflow. Trixie's room was colorful – thankfully not all pink – with a flowery bedspread and two striped rugs relieving the monotony of the brown carpet. A couple of shelves held books, toys, and several board games. Quirky posters – of things like a cat with a bowtie, and a frog on a moped – adorned the walls, which also held many of her own fantastical drawings. She pointed out one of a mermaid that she was particularly proud of, and a red-themed drawing of a castle on Mars, which he dutifully praised. The Dursleys would never have stood for any such nonsense, and it immediately made him think better of Trixie's mother since she tolerated 'magical rubbish'.

"What kind of plushies do you have?" Trixie asked, showing off her own collection. Harry tried to learn a few of their names. An ugly brown monkey-like plushie called 'Miss Alien' seemed to be her favorite.

"None. My… old family never bought me any. I guess Maze didn't think of it?"

"Not _any_?" Trixie asked, in a hushed voice. Harry shook his head.

"But what do you cuddle when you have a bad dream?" she asked.

"Well… sometimes I used to talk to Charlotte. She was a spider I kind of made friends with. I put bugs in her web sometimes," Harry offered hesitantly. She'd probably think he was weird.

"Cool!" Trixie exclaimed, to Harry's relief. "A pet spider sounds so cool! Hey, what other animals do you like?"

"I guess I like dogs – but not bulldogs – and deer, and rats. Spiders too, of course. I think they're cute, and it's fun to watch them spinning webs. I don't like cats much; they smell. Why?"

"Just wondering," Trixie replied, very casually. "I like horses, squirrels, and unicorns. And aliens of course. Why do you like deer?"

He was a little surprised she asked about deer, rather than questioning his fondness for rats and spiders. "I dunno. I just like them. The antlers are cool. Don't you think it would be cool to ride a deer?" It was the kind of imaginative question he wouldn't dare ask of the Dursleys, but Trixie found it quite reasonable.

"Yeah! You could hang onto its antlers while it galloped!" she agreed enthusiastically.

Harry didn't really need help unpacking but let Trixie assist him anyway, for the sheer novelty of having someone _help_ him with a chore.

"I think living here is going to be great," he vowed earnestly, "and if you'd like to pretend with me, I think it would be fun to be like we're brother and sister, like you said."

"Yes!" she squealed excitedly, wrapping her arms around him in another hug. He copied her carefully this time, hugging her back.

"You won't mind if I'm… a bit strange sometimes?" he asked cautiously. "Sometimes… weird things happen around me."

She tilted her head to look up at him – not that he was _that_ much taller than her despite being older – and asked slowly and carefully, "Weird like how Lucifer is weird?"

"Maybe?" he hedged. "Perhaps more like how Maze is weird."

"Do you _know_ about Lucifer? How he's actually Lucifer?" Trixie asked in a whisper.

"Oh! Yes. He tells everyone, apparently. But Maze says your mother doesn't believe him. So, _you_ know?"

Trixie let him go and sat down on the edge of his bed, patting the spot next to her until he sat obediently next to her. "Yeah, I know, but Mommy doesn't _know_ I know. I was hiding, and I saw a bad man shoot him. Bam! Right in the chest!" she said, in an intense whisper. "There was so much blood it made a big puddle, and I thought he was dead, but I kept quiet because it was important, or I would have been caught. Lucifer got up later and he was fine; he said he was dead but he got better. I don't know why Mommy doesn't believe him. I guess sometimes you have to see things yourself?"

"Wow! I don't think I could do that. I saw his eyes go fiery, so I know it's all true. So, you aren't scared of him? Or of demons?" Harry asked, whispering just like her, with a cautious glance at his open bedroom door.

"No. He's nice, and he saved Mommy and me. I think people have him all wrong. He's like a superhero! Lucifer was an angel once, you know."

"I know," Harry whispered, "but he cut his wings off."

"OW!" Trixie exclaimed, then clapped her hands over her mouth as she realized how noisy she'd gotten.

"Oh no, poor Lucifer!" she whispered.

There were footsteps on the stairs, and Maze poked her head around the doorway, before coming in. "Everything okay in here? You're not trying to kill each other?"

Trixie giggled, and Harry said, "No, ma'am."

"Just Maze, remember?"

"Yes, Maze. We were just talking, we're not fighting."

"Alright then!"

Trixie piped up, "Harry needs posters for his walls. And things to do drawings with. He can share mine, but it's nice to have your own. And he needs things for school, like a schoolbag and books. He's coming to school with me, right?"

"Yup! Linda explained all about it. Sounds dull, but apparently you have to go, Harry. We'll do real learning like knife-fighting in the afternoons. Apparently martial arts classes are an acceptable hobby for kids, so I'm looking for a decent teacher for you for that too."

"You know there's paperwork and stuff, right?" Trixie asked Maze. "To go to school? You can't just show up."

"All taken care of!" Maze said proudly. "He won't be in your class though – he's ten."

"Lucifer put someone on it," she explained to Harry. "He couldn't get a judge to sign something saying I'm a foster carer even with a favor to call in, can you believe it? Some bullshit about needing training, background checks, and home inspections. They let just _anyone_ breed offspring, but I need some kind of damn qualifications to take on one that's already half-grown? _Unbelievable_."

"You can't say 'bullshit', but you can say 'bull'," Trixie warned.

"Whatever. So Harry, we're related now, because that was easier to work out legally. I'm your first cousin once removed on your father's side. That makes me your dad's cousin. I'm your paternal grandfather's brother's daughter," she said slowly. "Your parents have the same first names and are still dead, and your grandfather is also Henry Smith like you, just to keep things simple, and my mother – your great-aunt – is Lilith Smith and lives in England and is too old and sick to look after kids. Your great-uncle – my dad – is dead. Your aunt and uncle and your lard-ass cousin are from your mother's side and all sucked, just like how we told Linda, so I took custody of you. Got all that?"

"Yes, Maze."

"Are you making stuff up?" Trixie asked.

"Going to snitch on us?" Maze asked, giving her a quirked eyebrow. "I thought better of you, spawn. I found him on the streets, he's really an orphan and his old family was total crap, so now he belongs with me. All the important parts are true. End of story."

"No, I won't snitch, but there's a price," Trixie warned, crossing her arms.

"You cunning minx," Maze praised, looking not at all perturbed.

Trixie took Maze aside to her own room for a private whispered conference. Harry worried what her 'price' would be, but Trixie swore it was nothing bad and Maze promised to tell him later. Thankfully, it didn't take him too long to find out.

Maze took him out shopping that afternoon and after they'd gotten him a bedside table, school things, more books, art supplies, and some posters (all on a Lux corporate credit card), she took Harry to a toy store.

"Trixie made me promise to get you some plushies, in exchange for her silence," Maze explained, adding a soft plush Siberian Husky dog with blue eyes to their cart. "Let's check out the Halloween aisle next – I bet we can find some spiders and rats to decorate your room with."

"You guys are _great_ at this family stuff!"

"Yeah, we're doing pretty good, aren't we?" Maze agreed smugly.


	5. Belonging

A/N: This chapter contains a spoiler for early season 2 of Lucifer.

* * *

Harry got up at the crack of dawn after his first night in his new home. His bed had been as good as the one in Lucifer's penthouse, and was the softest, most comfortable thing he could imagine with thick, warm blankets. As he'd drifted off to sleep with a belly full of macaroni cheese he'd sleepily gazed at the far wall where he could see a wardrobe full of his new clothes, and a bookshelf holding his small handful of books and toys. He certainly didn't want to risk losing all of that by being a lazy layabout the next morning now he had a real home. He'd prove he wasn't a burden! He carefully removed his Husky plushie – named Annwn with Maze's help – from the crook of his arm and set it carefully on his pillow while he made his bed.

There was no note on or under his door, and even after a thorough search downstairs he couldn't find a list of tasks to complete _anywhere_, so decided to show some initiative and do the obvious chores. Wary of waking anyone by vacuuming and risking angering them by being too noisy, he got to work scrubbing down the stove and doing the dishes from last night's dinner. He then got started on breakfast, cooking up some sausages (defrosted in the microwave), bacon, eggs, tomato, hash browns, and toast.

He wanted to cook a full English breakfast and prove what a good cook he could be, but he couldn't find any baked beans or black pudding. Hopefully they'd forgive him the omission, instead of blaming him for the lack of ingredients.

Everyone emerged just as he was putting out some cups of tea. It'd taken more effort than he'd expected to make it. What kind of people didn't own a kettle? Maybe it just hadn't been unpacked yet. He'd eventually given up searching and had resorted to heating mugs of water in the microwave.

"Mmm! That smells good!" Maze said, grabbing a plate and starting to eat. "Good work, spawn!"

"Thanks!" Harry said, beaming.

Trixie came out next, and asked for extra bacon, which he was happy to oblige her with.

"Are you going to eat too?" Maze asked. "Come and sit down, Harry. You're supposed to eat three times a day, remember? My parenting book says that breakfast is an important meal of the day for children."

"But Chloe hasn't been served yet," Harry fretted.

Maze shrugged. "So leave her a plate and cover it with aluminum foil. I think she's in the shower, but I guess she should be out soon."

Harry made sure to leave Chloe a generous portion of everything and served himself a plate.

"What about snacks?" Trixie asked Maze.

"What about them?"

"You have three meals a day plus snacks," Trixie explained. "You can have a snack at school in the morning before lunch, and another snack in the afternoon when you get home."

"Huh. Like nachos or chips?" Maze asked.

"No. Usually something small and healthy like fruit or carrot sticks. If you're lucky it's a cookie or some chocolate cake."

"What do you think, Harry?" Maze checked.

"I've never gotten snacks before, but my cousin had lots of them. Way more. But he was really fat, so I guess what Trixie said is probably better. Not the cake. The fruit and vegetables."

"Are you going to pack a sack lunch for Harry tomorrow for school?" Trixie asked.

"Can't he do that?"

"I can do it myself, if you like?" Harry volunteered optimistically. When Aunt Petunia had packed his lunches they'd never been very generously-sized.

Chloe came downstairs in a dressing gown with her hair all damp, grabbed her covered plate and joined them at the table.

"This looks fantastic!" she said, uncovering her breakfast. "Maze, I didn't know you were such a good cook, thank you!"

Maze looked over at Harry, and he shrugged and stayed silent. If she wanted to take the credit he wouldn't stop her. Aunt Petunia used to do it all the time, pretending _she_ was the one who'd labored over the housework and gardening, whenever neighbors praised her skills.

"Harry made it. Pretty good work, hey?" Maze said. "I don't cook much. Barbeques are fun, though."

Chloe widened her eyes and attempted to give Maze a meaningful look, subtly jerking her head in Harry's direction.

Maze looked puzzled for a second, then her expression cleared and she asked Harry, "Uh, you didn't use any sharp knives, did you? That's not allowed."

"No, Maze. Just a steak knife to cut the tomato."

Maze smiled and nodded her approval, which made Harry relax a bit.

Chloe sighed. "You did a great job Henry… Harry. Breakfast is fantastic, really. But you're too young to be cooking unsupervised, especially such a big meal at the stove."

"Hey!" objected Maze. "He's older than Trixie! He can do more than toast – he made great pancakes with strawberries for me and Lucifer at Lux. He didn't break the knife rule, so what's the problem?"

"If it's the mess in the kitchen, don't worry, I'll do all the dishes afterwards and wipe down the counters," promised Harry, getting nervous at Chloe's disapproval. "Or if you don't want me to cook, I can get started on pruning the rosebushes? Or vacuuming? Or the laundry? Just tell me what my chores are, and I promise I'll do a good job."

"It's fine, Harry," Chloe said soothingly. "You did a great job today. You don't need to do any of that other stuff, alright?"

Chloe's reassurances didn't settle Harry's nerves, however, and he ate a little anxiously while Trixie chattered brightly about how much fun it'd be to go to school together tomorrow.

After breakfast, Harry noticed Chloe drawing Maze aside for a private talk, and he ignored Trixie's invitation to watch TV with her in favor of eavesdropping at Maze's closed bedroom door. They were quiet but not whispering, which was a blessing for him.

"…too much for him," he overhead Chloe say. "Just because he's used to it doesn't mean it should continue."

"Look," he overheard Maze say. "Demon spawn need to prove their usefulness, or they might be killed by the stronger demons."

Chloe let out a strangled groan. "Enough with the metaphors! Look, he's human, he's a child, and doing too much work at his age is a problem."

"Nuh uh! He's more like a little demon spawn right now than a human child. He's used to a rough life where he needed to fight for every scrap of food and prove his worth to his caretakers. If he doesn't have a chance to prove he's worth keeping, he's going to get stressed, and scared. Maybe even violent. We need to let him prove himself and then he'll settle down because he'll know we won't discard or hurt him."

There was silence for a moment, before he heard Chloe say, "You're right. Yes, we need to remember he's from a background of neglect and abuse. So, you're saying he needs to prove himself? Did Linda say that would help?"

"She said a bunch of stuff, I can't remember _all_ of it. But there was definitely something about making sure he feels safe and like I won't get rid of him. Trust me, this will help. He also needs to know that he's at least as important as Trixie is."

"Alright, then. You're his uh… carer, but we need to have consistent parenting since we're sharing a house. How about he does the same tasks as Trixie, like keeping his room tidy, doing his homework, and putting his own laundry away, plus one or two other tasks? He _is_ older than her. But not cooking breakfast every day."

"Whatever. How about he just cooks breakfast on weekends, and maybe gardening once a week? Give him some praise and he'll be a happy little spawn. Decker, you'll need to explain that to Trixie that I'm not mad at her if I pick him first for things. That I still like her, but Harry will need to know he's at least as good as she is, at least for me."

"Great!" Chloe said. "I can do that. Alright, you should let him know about his new chore schedule, then."

"No need. He's been eavesdropping on us, haven't you, Harry?"

Harry scrambled away from the door swiftly and silently, and when the two adults emerged from Maze's bedroom a few minutes later they found him acting casual, trying to pretend he'd been sitting on the couch watching TV with Trixie all along.

Maze didn't seem fooled though and took him back to her room for a private talk, just the two of them.

"Decker wants me to tell you off for eavesdropping," Maze started, "but my parenting book says you should reward kids for behavior you want to see continue. Frankly, if you _didn't_ want to listen in to important conversations about yourself I'd think you were a damn idiot. So, well done."

"I wasn't eavesdropping," Harry insisted.

"Lying's fine too," Maze added, ruffling his hair like he was being adorably cute. "You don't have the skill to pull off lying to me though, so don't think you'll get away with it. I'm honestly not mad about the eavesdropping though, so it's not even necessary to try right now. Trust me, if I'm angry at you, you'll _know_. But unless you're like, betraying me or outright torturing or killing someone and I haven't told you you're allowed to do it, you're not going to wear any consequences worse than a time-out or a loss of privileges. Like dessert or TV. I might make you exercise, I guess. They do that in the army, and it's apparently alright to make kids do push-ups too. My book and Linda agree that it's bad to hit kids, so I won't do that. Not counting if we're doing martial arts training, and then you're allowed to hit me back; I won't be hitting you as a punishment. I might yell or swear, though."

Harry let the implicit permission to kill people if _Maze said it was okay_ slide by. He knew as a demon she didn't look at things quite like humans did. Instead, he merely hesitated before asking what he really wanted to know about. "You're really not mad at me?"

"Nope, and Decker's only slightly annoyed. So, don't eavesdrop on her in the future unless it's really important and you're sure you won't get caught, deal?"

"Deal," Harry agreed warily.

-000-

Harry slowly settled into his new life as Henry 'Harry' James Smith, in kinship care with his alleged relative Mazikeen Smith as his foster parent. As Lucifer's forged and favor-supplied paperwork for them slowly worked its way through the bureaucracy of various government departments, both Harry and Maze were surprised to find that she started to receive a small amount of money from the government to help pay for his care. He wondered if the Dursleys had received government benefits in the UK for looking after him, despite constantly complaining about what a burden he was.

Despite the small income Maze spent a lot of time job-hunting, however, not wanting to stay forever dependent on Lucifer's generosity to cover her bills. She eventually took the phrase 'job-hunting' literally and started working as a professional bounty hunter, catching criminals and parole-dodgers and dragging them – sometimes literally – to the cops.

When Maze was away and Chloe was working, Harry and Trixie were cared for by either a babysitter or by Trixie's dad Dan. Harry found he really liked the man, and thought he was _nothing_ like Uncle Vernon except for a willingness to overindulge them both with too much chocolate cake. The two kids were also – at Maze's insistence to balance out 'all the human-ness' – occasionally babysat by Lucifer. He wasn't as good at games as Dan was, but he was a much better cook.

Official government recognition of a kinship care arrangement did come with a string attached, however. Henry Smith was now on the radar of LA's Kinship Care Services department, and that meant a home visit by a local DCFS social worker. However, with a well-kept house and two police officers willing to vouch that Maze was doing a decent job, they didn't even need Lucifer's charm to smooth the way.

Maze still made mistakes, however, so far none of them had been the kind you couldn't recover from.

At school one afternoon when she was picking up him and Trixie, another parent gestured at Harry and asked bluntly, "What is he? Where's your boy from?"

"He's part-demon or part-angel, we're not sure yet," Maze said, startled into sharing more truth than perhaps was wise. "Maybe something else. Probably born on earth, though." Lucifer got away with constantly telling the truth due to his boundless charisma, but Maze didn't have that advantage and usually tended to lie. Slips ups did still happen from time to time, however.

"Aren't all children a bit of a mix of both?" the mother laughed. "But I meant where's he from… is he British? That accent is so cute!"

"Oh… yes. Part of the family is English. He's an American citizen, though."

"Like your boss. He has such a _wonderful_ accent," the mother said, with a wistful sigh, twiddling the rings on her left hand absent-mindedly. "Is he the father?"

"No."

Harry had overheard Chloe curiously and persistently asking Lucifer about it, shortly after Harry had moved in. Lucifer had been very insistent about Harry _definitely_ not being his son. He apparently hadn't even been visiting earth in the right year for Harry to be conceived.

"I don't work for him anymore," Maze snapped. "I'm my own… woman."

"She hunts down bad people!" Trixie piped up. "The ones who get away from the police or who don't go to court when they should."

"But not with a gun," Harry added. "It's not sporting and she has to bring them in alive anyway."

"That's… nice," the mother replied, with a strained smile. "Well, we must be going. Come along, Neil."

She hustled away her son quickly, leaving the three of them staring after her.

"Huh. What went wrong there? Not that I care," Maze said.

Harry suspected she _did_ care – a little – but didn't want to admit it.

"I dunno. Maybe she doesn't like cops?" Trixie suggested. "Or maybe your cranky voice scared her?"

"I didn't use a scary voice!" Maze said, brow furrowed in total disbelief.

"Humans get scared easily," Harry said, agreeing with Trixie. "Even a little cranky can be scary, and you're _very_ good at being scary when you want to be."

Maze shrugged. "Whatever. I've got enough friends already. So, you kids ready to go get haircuts? We can get cake afterwards."

"Yeah!" Trixie said, bouncing with excitement.

"Let's go!"

Maze was even more disappointed than Harry was when Harry's new haircut was still there the next morning.

"I thought you said it would grow back," she griped. "Overnight, you said."

"It did _last_ time. I don't know why it didn't now. They cut off more hair than my aunt did, though it looks much better. Maybe because it was at a proper barber shop with clippers, instead of at home with kitchen scissors?"

Maze grunted unhappily. "Maybe. The metal might make a difference. Lucifer wants to try stabbing you with his collection of knives made of different materials, to see if you heal differently with different things. But you're _my_ spawn and I don't think it's a good idea unless we know you'll heal fast, and I'm not so sure you will. You've still got that skinned knee and that was from _yesterday_."

Harry's heart warmed. He was _her_ spawn.

"He's got another plan to try and test your powers this weekend. Remember what we talked about, if he tries to hurt you without my permission?"

Harry nodded, and said nervously, "I kick him hard in the nuts and tell him if he wants to boss around demon spawn that you said he can go to Hell and do it there."

Maze nodded approvingly and ruffled his hair. "That's it! You stand up for yourself. He'll respect that, if you don't push it too far."

Lucifer's plans weren't as bad as either of them had feared though. When Maze dropped Harry off at Lux on Saturday after his morning ninjutsu class she had a quick chat with Lucifer and gave Harry an approving nod before leaving. He relaxed fractionally, and when Lucifer revealed the day's plan he relaxed even more.

"Hawaiian shirts!" Lucifer announced, opening up a cardboard box full of kid-sized clothes. "I got one in fuchsia with lime green hibiscus flowers, and another in a virulent shade of orange with purple palm trees. If that doesn't trigger your bad-fashion-destroying powers, we'll have to break out the t-shirt with the pug wearing a hat, the Hammer pants, and the cheap nylon in neon colors," he said, with a shudder of genuine disgust.

Harry obediently spent the morning playing dress-up in a variety of exceptionally ugly clothes, happy in the knowledge that no knives were involved in today's powers-testing plan, and that he wouldn't have to ever wear any of the outfits in public.

"Are you even _trying_ to shrink or otherwise destroy these abominations against good taste?" Lucifer complained, after a red Christmas sweater with a print of Trump wearing a Santa hat and the words 'Make Christmas Great Again' had failed to yield any kind of supernatural effects at all.

Harry took the sweater off and tossed it in the discard pile. "I promise I am! I'm trying to shrink them, but nothing's happening."

"You don't _like_ Hawaiian shirts and neon, do you?" Lucifer asked suspiciously, holding out a shockingly bright pink ruffled tutu that featured a llama's head picked out in rainbow sequins on the bodice for some bewildering reason. Harry stepped into it obediently.

"Hell no!" Harry swore. Maze had trained him out of saying 'God', and Chloe had approved 'hell' as being a borderline acceptable swear word. "These are the ugliest clothes I've seen in my life, I promise. I don't have to keep them after we're done, do I?"

Lucifer shook his head decisively. "Definitely not. I think we should probably throw them in the bin."

"I think we should burn them," Harry suggested. "If we throw them away there's a risk someone might find them and wear them."

Lucifer perked up. "Even better! Dumpster fire it is. Alright, we've got the bubble skirt with the cartoon animals and the orange overalls with the giant pockets to go, and if that doesn't do the trick we'll call it a day, and get you back into Gucci trousers and a nice button-up shirt, alright? There's only so much hideousness I can bear to look at."

-000-

Harry tried doing everything he could to impress Maze and show how grateful he was for her giving him a real home. His cooking skills won her approval, but he wasn't allowed to cook and show off for her as often as he'd like. Some cautious questioning, which he turned into blunt questioning after Maze failed to see what he was trying to ask, elicited her opinion that she'd prefer he did well in school rather than badly. Getting good grades won praise from Trixie's mom, which was nice, but while Maze approved of him getting three A's on his report card it didn't win him the same level of verbal praise, approving nods, and literal pats on the head that mastering new martial arts moves did. So, Harry poured more energy into building his physical fitness and practising his katas, working out every morning. Trixie thought it was really cool he was learning to fight (and was kind of jealous) and offered him the future position of General of Mars, which he accepted graciously. Chloe bought him a Security-red Star Trek shirt in celebration, which she'd decorated with iron-on patches of a circle of five stars on each shoulder. Trixie got a royal purple fringed presidential sash to go with her own Command-gold shirt, which made her babble with excitement.

The two of them played space-themed games for the next fortnight and built a spaceship out of cardboard boxes in Harry's room, since there was more space in there. It was their secret place to whisper and plot, no adults allowed. Trixie whispered about her hope that Lucifer and her Mommy would get together now that her parents' divorce was final, so that Mommy would be happy again and Lucifer would always keep them safe. Harry shared his fear that Maze wouldn't keep him if it turned out that he _was_ just an ordinary human boy after all, and he'd have to live with strangers who might be just as bad as his aunt and uncle had been, or that he'd end up in an orphanage.

"Maze loves you though!" Trixie reassured. "She works really hard at being a Mommy. I think she'd keep you anyway."

"I don't know," Harry said dubiously. "She liked Lucifer, and promised to be loyal and stay with him, but she left him anyway and she knew him for _centuries_. She barely knows me, really. I have to show I'm special. Which is so different from the Dursleys! They hated it when weird things happened."

"Well, they sucked. Anyway, adults separate sometimes because they grow apart but it's no-one's fault, Mommy said so. It just happens. It doesn't happen like that with parents and kids. You like it better here with us, right? You don't want to leave us?"

"No way! It's _so_ much better. Having a little sister is way better than having a cousin," Harry promised. "You're my best friend, Trixie."

"Better than Paul?"

"I like Paul, it's nice to have a school friend, I've never had one before. But yes, better than Paul."

"Oh!" Trixie exclaimed. "I know! If something happens with Maze, then Lucifer can look after you, and then when he and Mommy get married then we'll be brother and sister."

"Lucifer's the one who said Maze has to give me back to the police or something if I'm just ordinary," Harry fretted.

"He wouldn't do that."

"That's what he said!"

"I bet he's changed his mind now he knows you, but if he won't adopt you then maybe my Mommy can do it! But I think Maze really wants to keep you Harry, so you don't need to worry about that," Trixie said, giving Harry a hug. He clung to her like a limpet.

-000-

"Star," Harry guessed.

Maze flipped the Zener card she was holding up so Harry could see the design. "Nope. Wavy lines."

She held up another card, wearing a carefully blank expression as she looked at the design that was hidden from Harry.

"Circle?"

She flipped it around to show Harry a cross and drew another card.

"Cross?"

This time he was right and gave her a happy smile.

After seven more cards – out of which he only got one more correct – they checked the tally.

"Seven right out of twenty-five. That's not too bad?" he said optimistically. "On average it should be five."

"Not significantly better than guessing. If you were a psychic you should have gotten at least twenty."

Harry sighed.

"We'll find something. It's alright that you don't have wings or a demon face, and mind-reading's a pain anyway – it drives a lot of people mad. How's your arm healing?" she asked. "I've got photos on my phone of how Linda's arm is going today, so we can compare."

Harry unbuttoned his shirt cuff and rolled his sleeve up. "I'm glad Linda's talking to us again. And now I can talk to her about demon stuff and she believes me."

"Me too. I was so mad at Lucifer for screwing everything up, but she's recovered well."

"She's helpful, too. Tiny cuts was a _way_ better idea than throwing daggers or stabbing me."

"That was _always_ a dumb idea. Lucifer's pretty stupid sometimes, and he doesn't listen to me like he should."

Maze leaned forwards with a faint squeaking sound from her tight leather clothes and peered closely at the seven parallel scratches along Harry's forearm. She hummed and glanced back and forth between Harry's arm and her phone and took some photos of the scratches.

"Well?" Harry asked impatiently.

"You're healing faster than Linda is. Five of these already look half-healed: copper, plastic, glass, stone, and silver. The cold iron and the demon steel are going slower. Interesting."

"What does it mean?"

Maze shrugged. "I don't know. It's something, though. It'd be clearer if it was only the demon-steel taking longer; then we'd know you're most likely a cambion or nephilim. I'll tell Lucifer, and once he pulls his head out of his ass and stops moping about Uriel he can talk it over with Amenadiel. We'll talk to Linda, too, of course. For the human perspective."

"So, I'm definitely something not-human?" Harry asked. It was weird to feel _hopeful_ at the possibility of proof he was indeed a freak. The truth was, however, that he wanted to be a freak with Maze, Chloe, Trixie, and Lucifer for company, much more than he'd ever wanted to be normal for the Dursleys.

"What am I, an injury expert? Don't answer that," Maze said, and Harry's jaw snapped shut before he'd said a word. "I don't know how much human healing varies on earth. Hell, you might even be part samovila or something, I don't know. Oh! We should check if you can entrance people by dancing or singing."

"Part what?"

"Samovila, also known as vila or samodiva. They're a species of shape-changing harpy that can look like beautiful human women. There used to be a couple of villages of them back in the twelfth century, or was it the eleventh?

"Anyway, Lucifer was very fond of them," she said, with a smirk, "and on one of our visits to earth he spent a week solid at their village Zmajkovo, in Bulgaria. It's gone now, though. Just a boring empty field, and so is Patelevo in Macedonia. Believe me, Lucifer and I looked hard for them, while he stubbornly pretended he wasn't upset they'd died out. There were never a lot of them, and sailors killed most of the harpies over the centuries. Still, maybe you have one for an ancestor? They loved mixing with human men, even though they can lay eggs just fine without them."

Harry blinked. He wasn't sure he wanted to be part egg-laying harpy. Still, it would be better than being normal. "Do they have wings? Maybe I flew up onto the school roof without knowing? Are vila wings different to angel wings in how they come out? Would you keep me if I'm part-vila?"

"Sure," Maze said instantly, which he found encouraging. "Lucifer promised I wouldn't have to hand you over to human foster carers unless you're pure human. I think vila wings work differently to angel wings - I'll look into it. Pity I can't just nip into Hell to interrogate a few souls from centuries ago. I'll have to bug Lucifer with questions instead."

To check off the latest possibility on their list of possible powers to investigate, Harry was duly signed up for a talent show at school to dance and sing. He practiced at home dutifully but didn't feel that this was going to be it, especially when his practice performance at home didn't get a better response from Maze, Chloe, Dan, and Trixie than polite applause. Maze suggested he might just be too young for his vila powers to work yet, but Harry wasn't convinced by that argument. He didn't think his singing voice would get _that_ much better in a few years' time, and decided he'd be happy to just not embarrass himself too much in front of the whole school at the talent show.

-000-

"How's your powers testing going?" Trixie asked, flopping onto Harry's bed early one Saturday morning. "Maybe you have cooking superpowers. You're really good at cooking! What are you making today? I'm hungry."

Harry yawned widely and smacked his lips sleepily. He'd been allowed to stay up late last night and watch 'Star Wars' as a reward for earning his green belt in ninjutsu. "I have some minor healing ability, but we haven't proven anything except that yet. Any other powers are yet to show themselves.

"Breakfast is going to be huevos rancheros breakfast tostadas with refried beans, egg, and avocado." He'd been experimenting with more exotic dishes lately than the Dursleys had ever stood for.

"Yum!"

Harry climbed out of bed, shrugged on his fuzzy green dressing gown, and headed downstairs to the kitchen with Trixie trotting eagerly beside him, chattering away brightly. "Maze said last night we're going out today, but she won't say what. It's a surprise. Mommy needs to go in to work again, but she says she has Tuesday and Wednesday off next week unless there's something really urgent on. Daddy's coming over for Taco Tuesday! Do you think you and Maze could invite Lucifer? Then he and Daddy can make friends some more, and Daddy won't be mad if Mommy goes out on a date with Lucifer."

Harry shook his head. "I don't think so. Lucifer's still having problems with his mum, and Maze says he's scared that she or some other angels might try and attack your mum if they figure out how much he likes her."

Trixie slumped and sighed unhappily.

Harry tentatively reached out to give her a comforting hug. "Hey, it's okay. They'll figure it out. He likes her, and she likes him, so they _have_ to get together eventually. You sure you don't want Dan to get back together with your mum?"

Trixie shook her head slowly. "Noo… I did at first. But… they fought all the time. They still do, even when they're trying not to. I want my daddy to live with us again… but I also want them to be happy. Lucifer makes Mommy smile and laugh. Anyway, Daddy has a new girlfriend. He says I can meet her a bit later if things get more serious and he's sure they're going to work out. Maybe in a few weeks' time?"

"Huh! Well, good for him, I guess? Is she nice? What's she like?" Harry asked, getting started on cooking breakfast. Trixie sometimes like to help him in the kitchen, and today as her favorite cartoons hadn't started yet she fetched him things from the fridge, enjoying her role as cook's assistant.

"I don't know, I haven't met her yet," Trixie said, rolling her eyes. "Daddy says she's a lawyer and she is divorced with young kids. And she has some grown-up step-kids, too. So I think she must be pretty old."

"Ew!" Harry said, screwing up his face in disgust and sticking his tongue out. "She must be old enough to be your _grandma_."

"I know, right!"

Harry whizzed up some avocado, lime juice, and various other ingredients in a food processor, while Trixie focused carefully on spreading refried beans on some corn tortillas as he'd instructed.

"Lucifer's older…" Harry said thoughtfully, as he arranged the tortillas on a tray and sprinkled them with cheese before putting them in the oven. "He has to be like, thousands of years old."

Trixie's nose wrinkled up. "Welllll he doesn't _look_ old. Or act old. So it's different. It's not like he's _grandpa_-old. He's silly, and fun. And nice. Daddy says his girlfriend is nice. I dunno." She shrugged noncommittally.

"Guess you'll find out eventually, if they stay together."

"Do you think Maze will ever get married?" Trixie asked.

Harry glanced around to make sure that the adults hadn't gotten up yet before whispering to Trixie, "Maze dates humans all the time, but not seriously. Lucifer told me that Maze dated his brother Amenadiel, but they broke up ages ago. Like last year or something. They had a big fight, and he doesn't think they'll get back together."

"Oh! Cool!" Trixie whispered back. "A demon dating an angel!"

Harry finished up the rest of the cooking on his own, after a brief argument with Trixie about it. Linda had encouraged him to fight – which was _so_ weird – saying that it was _healthy_ to argue about things so long as it didn't end in swearing, tears, badly hurt feelings, or actual real fighting. Trixie eventually conceded that it was true she wasn't allowed to use the oven or stove, and that Harry _was _in charge of cooking breakfast on weekends, and went to watch TV. Maze emerged from her room just minutes after their argument was settled and gave Harry an approving grin and a thumbs up, which heartened him and made him relax from his defensively hunched position. Harry knew she liked Trixie a lot, but she also liked seeing Harry win any kind of fight, even just an argument.

Chloe came down when Maze hollered that breakfast was ready and scarfed down some breakfast tostadas and inhaled some coffee before rushing out the door – almost late for work – with shouted thanks to Harry for the meal and some hugs for both kids. Harry liked Chloe's hugs. They were squishier and less stiff than Maze's hugs, which she still only gave very sparingly (though she was getting better). Harry suspected she'd been told by Linda – or read it in a book – that children needed hugs. Left to her own devices she seemed to favour smiles and pats on the head, favours, or gifts as her preferred ways to show affection. Harry had reassured her that it was fine – he wasn't used to hugs either. He didn't tell anyone – except Linda whom he could tell anything – that he wasn't used to approving smiles either. He didn't want Maze to smile at him because he _wanted_ her to. He wanted her to do it just because she was happy with him. It was _wonderful_ when she did that.

When breakfast was over and the dishes had been stacked in the dishwasher, Maze finally revealed the day's outing to them. "We're off to the zoo!"

"Yes!" Trixie shouted. "So cool!"

"That sounds fun!" Harry agreed, almost as excited as she was, just less inclined to bounce and yell.

-000-

The three of them had a great time at the LA Zoo. Alright, two of them did, anyway. Maze got bored whenever the kids wanted to look at the cuter and cuddlier animals and was mostly interested in the deadlier creatures on exhibit. As well as simply enjoying the day out, she encouraged Harry to take the opportunity to see if he had any 'beast-speaking' abilities.

"If you have selkie blood you should understand seals, for instance," she suggested.

"Disney princesses can all talk to animals," Trixie suggested helpfully.

"Oh?" Maze asked curiously. "Do they all drink the blood from dragons' hearts?"

"Ew! No."

"Ate a magic salmon? Got the ability to talk to clan spirits after eating mushrooms and going into a trance?"

Trixie shook her head. "I don't think so. They just can. Because they're princesses. Animals like them because they're nice people."

Maze looked skeptical but didn't challenge her claims any further.

Harry – to Trixie's disappointment – didn't seem to have the ability to charm birds out of the sky to sit on his shoulders during the zoo's 'World of Birds' show, nor was he able to talk to seals. Maze encouraged him to keep trying with other animals, however.

"Some types of magical creatures and beings have an animal that's special for them, and they can't talk to or control other animals."

"Maybe spiders?" Trixie suggested sympathetically. "You like spiders."

"Yeah, but if I could talk to them, I'm sure I would've noticed by now."

He had the most success with the owls in the aviary section. "I feel like some of them can maybe understand me?" Harry said optimistically.

He eyed a Eurasian Eagle Owl with beautiful dark brown and tawny plumage, and it stared back with vibrant orange eyes. "Flap your wings!" he ordered.

Trixie held her breath expectantly.

The owl just stared at him, wings still folded against its body. Its head moved very slightly.

"Didn't work," Maze said.

"No, it didn't," Harry agreed. "But I can just _tell_ it thinks I'm an idiot. Its beak looks all disdainful."

"Its beak can't change," Trixie argued. "It's a beak. Not a mouth."

"Still. I can tell."

"Want to try another owl?" Maze invited.

He tried talking to – and ordering around – a few more owls. Most of them didn't give him that vague sense of being understood, no matter how much he concentrated or chatted to them. They seemed very ordinary, somehow. There was one Great Horned Owl that he thought he felt a connection to, but Maze and Trixie weren't very impressed by his relating that he could just _tell_ it wanted to be left alone to sleep.

"Even I can tell that," Trixie averred.

"Yeah, the closed eyes are a bit of a hint. Still, it's a maybe. He might just need practice. Or the right owl," Maze conceded, giving Harry a pat on the head before making a note on her phone about the owls.

A slender lime-green snake with a yellow tail caught Maze's eye in the reptile house, as it slithered around on a leafy tree branch in its display tank. "This one has a deadly neurotoxin as its venom," she said approvingly. "West African Green Mamba."

"Scientific Name: Dendroaspis viridis," Harry read aloud, looking at the information plaque. "This reptile is a very alert and fast-moving snake. Green Mambas are primarily solitary creatures, and out of the four species of Mambas, they are one of three that are arboreal. They are diurnal hunters – active during the day."

He glanced up at the wiggly snake as it slithered around the branches. "_You're certainly a very active ssnake, aren't you?_" he hissed at it, not realizing how his voice had changed to an odd mix of hisses and sibilant syllables.

"_Yess, I am. It is time to hunt and there is a bug in here_," it hissed back at him, head turning to watch him.

"Did you hear that?" Harry said excitedly. "It talked! It's a talking snake!"

Maze shook her head. "No. It's just an ordinary snake. I think it's you. Try again! Get it to nod."

Harry turned back to it. "_Can you understand me, ssnake? Would you please nod your head?_"

It obediently did so, green head bobbing in place in the air while its body stayed wrapped around a branch. "_Certainly, Sspeaker_."

"Did you see that?!" Harry asked excitedly. "And I can hear it just like it's speaking English! You can't hear it, right?"

"I did! I saw it! That was _so cool_!" Trixie squealed, hugging Harry in her excitement. "It's not speaking English, you're speaking Snake! You sound like you're hissing stuff when you talk to it! Like hassah shahsha sss! Didn't you notice? What did it say?"

"First it said it was time to hunt and there was a bug somewhere, then it agreed to nod its head and called me 'Speaker'," Harry summarized.

"Do it again, I'll video you," Maze ordered, and Harry obliged, chatting with the snake for a while about how comfy its home was – it didn't know any different and food was plentiful – and what it meant to be a 'Speaker'. Maze and Harry were all a little disappointed to learn that the word didn't mean much more than the obvious – that it recognized that he was special for being able to speak to it, and it felt an urge to obey him.

"Does this mean I'm… what? Part-demon? Because of the serpent in the garden of Eden?" Harry asked excitedly.

"Well it's definitely not an angelic trait. I'm putting my money on naga ancestry; they're part-snake people who can take on human form, and they have their own language they instinctually know from birth. Also, the ability to sense things from owls might come from there too. Including the bit where they didn't want to listen to you. Nagas and various bird-people don't get along; they're traditional enemies, and there's a sense of that deep down. Might be a bit of witch or goblin ancestry mixed in there too. Lucifer's sure there's something a bit fey in the mix since you don't heal as well from iron weapons as other types."

It wasn't definitive enough proof to be completely sure what he was, just a best guess. However, it was enough for Trixie, though, who was convinced being part naga was incredibly cool. "You should get a pet snake, and it can sit on your shoulder and you can talk to it and it could do things for you!" she babbled excitedly. A family passing by through the exhibit smiled indulgently at her youthful imaginings and moved along peacefully.

"That does sound cool," Maze agreed. "I'm done with the zoo. Let's hit a pet shop and get you a snake."

The kids cheered their approval.

-000-

Despite the plan made at the zoo to buy Harry a snake immediately, it took more than a month before Harry actually got his new pet, and it actually ended up being an early birthday present. Maze had insisted that the only snake worth buying was one that was venomous, but Trixie had stubbornly insisted that her mommy would go nuts if they came home with a scary-looking rattlesnake or a slit-eyed viper, which were the only venomous snake species for sale in the couple of pet stores they'd checked out.

Maze had sulked and huffily refused to buy Harry a 'boring' snake, and in the end they'd returned home without a snake at all. Trixie's prediction proved to be true, for while Chloe was willing for Harry to have a pet snake in the house provided both he and Maze took good care of it, she insisted it be a safe, non-venomous species. With Lucifer's help through his network of contacts, Maze eventually found a suitable species for sale at a reptile expo and got paperwork and a permit sorted. Two sets of paperwork in fact.

Officially, and according to what Chloe was told, Harry was now the proud owner of a Rough Green Snake, named Jafar after the shape-changing villain in the 'Aladdin' movie beloved by both Trixie and Harry. He was a four-foot-long, beautiful bright lime-green snake with a touch of black on the edges of his scales, and cute brown round-pupiled eyes. The fact sheet about the proper care of Rough Green Snakes that Maze showed Chloe promised it was a non-aggressive harmless arboreal species that rarely bit humans.

On the second set of paperwork that Chloe didn't get to see, however, Harry was now in fact the proud owner of a Boomslang, an extremely venomous African tree snake which looked very similar to the more placid non-venomous species that Chloe _thought_ they'd brought home. In private, Maze waxed lyrical about his new pet's hemotoxic venom that prevented coagulation; those bitten would likely underestimate the seriousness of the bite until they started uncontrollably bleeding from their eyes, mouth, and nose some hours later. Harry nervously ordered Jafar to never, ever bite anyone unless he was explicitly told to, an order which Jafar was happy to comply with.

"_I'd rather not bite anyone unlesss I have to_," Jafar promised. He was in fact a rather shy snake, and despite his deadly venom Harry hadn't found he was very aggressively-minded. "_I only want to bite my prey. I promise not to bite any humanss – or demonss – unlesss you tell me to_."

Jafar was a sweetheart, as attested to by Harry and Trixie, and while he enjoyed his massive six-foot-high vivarium with a big tree branch to curl around, there were few things he liked better than riding around atop Harry's shoulders, snuggled up against his warm neck.

"_You're like a warm tree,_" Jafar said admiringly. "_I am so lucky to be the companion of a Sspeaker!_"

Harry took Jafar everywhere he could and introducing him to Lucifer was an interesting experience because apparently the fallen angel didn't smell exactly human, but he didn't smell like Maze either. Some extra instructions from Harry were needed, and 'bird-people' were added to the list of beings that Jafar wasn't allowed to bite.

Under Lucifer's watchful eye as their Bonder, with Jafar looking on interestedly from where he was coiled on Lucifer's shoulders, Maze officially adopted Harry with a magically-empowered Blood Pact ritual that wove red lines of light around their bloody clasped hands as she promised threefold to protect him from rivals who might seek to kill or injure him, to teach him to fight to the best of her ability, and to care for him as her own child until he was grown.

The boring adoption paperwork Harry's assigned social worker went over with them later at home was much less excitingly dramatic, but much more official for human purposes.

"Does this mean you're my mum now?" Harry double-checked.

"Oh! Yes, I suppose so," Maze said, as if the thought hadn't really occurred to her until now. She looked rather wide-eyed and startled.

"Congratulations mum, it's a bouncing baby part-lamia with a touch of fey magic," Lucifer said, with a cheerful toothy smile.

Maze flipped Lucifer off while Harry hugged her.

-000-

Harry had a _real party of his own_ for his eleventh birthday at the end of June. He invited three kids from school he was friendly with, and another four from his ninjutsu class, as well as everyone in his adopted family, even the adults. So, Lucifer was there too, and Linda came as well, and Dan. There was cake, and party food, and games to play, and it was the best day ever!

His pile of presents might not have reached Dudley-like levels of magnificence, even with everyone's gifts all stacked up together on a table, but it was still overwhelming and made his heart feel like it was going to burst from sheer happiness.

He had new clothes, books about snakes and a couple of kids' cook books, some DVDs, a bunch of toys and board games, a race car set, a dartboard, and some shuriken. The shuriken were a secretive gift from Maze, who swore that throwing stars didn't _technically_ count as knives so she wasn't breaking Chloe's rule, but advised that Harry should probably keep quiet about them all the same.

"Practice when she's not looking," Maze had advised.

After all the presents were opened, there were two cards from the mail to deal with. One was a polite birthday card with a spider holding a bunch of balloons on the front that had been sent by Harry's assigned social worker, cheerily wishing him a happy birthday. The other letter was a little more mysterious and was addressed in fancy calligraphy.

"It came for you this morning," Chloe said, passing it to Harry. "I've been wondering ever since who's it from? A friend from school who moved away?"

Harry shook his head. "No. I don't know anyone like that."

"Is it from your old family?" Chloe asked, in a sympathetic whisper. "Do you want me to read it for you? Or do you want to open it in private?"

Harry looked at the fancy black calligraphy on the front that read, "Henry James Smith, Upstairs corner bedroom with full bath" before their San Pedro street address. No way would the Dursleys use his new name (and how would they even know it?) or take the time to write in calligraphy. Nor would they write such an odd addition to an address.

"No, I don't think it's from them. I'll open it."

Breaking the old-fashioned wax seal on the envelope, Harry pulled out a couple of sheets of thick creamy paper that looked handmade. Reading over the odd letter he hummed thoughtfully. It looked like Lucifer had been right in his guess that Harry had some fey or witch ancestry as well as having naga blood.

"Maze, have you ever heard of a school called 'Ilvermorny'? I have an invitation to go there next year."

Maze looked momentarily startled, then grinned like a shark, all teeth. "That old place is still around?" she said, with a glance at Chloe and the small cluster of watching party guests. "I thought it had closed. Can I read the letter?"

Harry passed it over, and Maze skimmed through it quickly. "They accept day students, good. We'll need a fireplace."

"Pardon?" Chloe asked.

Maze cleared her throat. "Just distracted. Thinking about renovations to the penthouse Lucifer has in mind."

"So, I can go? It sounds fun."

Maze patted him on the head. "Yes, you can go. It sounds like a magical experience you shouldn't miss out on," she said, with a sly smile.

"Thanks… mum," Harry said shyly. Maze patted him on the head again and beamed proudly, before drawing him into a careful hug.

* * *

A/N: The information about the Green Mamba is a quotation from the LA Zoo website with only minimal alterations.

FYI it's canonical that Lucifer dislikes Trump. Lucifer quote about tyrants in Hell: "So, we can... you know, talk about Caligula, Stalin, Trump. I mean, I know he's not dead, but he's definitely going."

Consultingsorcerorof221B - Thanks for your help in selecting a snake species for Harry and an informative discussion on snakes.

Lilysmiles – Added in a denial of Lucifer's paternity, since someone totally _should_ wonder about that.

**Update!** Unfortunately, due to a series of rude reviews containing abusive language, the final chapter of this fic has been deleted. If you're interested in reading the now-removed epilogue and willing to be courteous in your response (whether you like the epilogue or not), you can find it on my AO3 account.

The story as posted on FFN stands on its own as five chapters. The story as posted on AO3 is six chapters, and the epilogue contains **bonus** content for curious readers; a scene showing some repercussions for the Dursleys, and a concise summation of some flow-on events for those wondering, "What happened next?" It does not contain any additional full scenes with Harry, Maze, or Lucifer.


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